The day in question is the 29th of July, and never mind the fact that it’s almost a month past that date, I’m going to write about and post about it. So, here goes.
Kanab, UT, was the place where I awoke. I cannot remember now the name of the motel that I had stayed at, but the wireless internet there was particularly exceptional (when compared with other such places I’d stayed at that for whatever reason wouldn’t allow the uploading of pictures). After gathering up my things and placing them neatly in their designated spaces within the confines of my truck, I drove on over to the motel’s office, parked, and got out. I walked to the door, entered, and saw a sign that said something to the effect of ‘Out in the yard, leave keys and remotes in basket.’ And I did. Then I left.
After leaving Kanab, I stopped in Fredonia, AZ, and procured the much needed gasoline and ice. From there, the road I took was littered with signs stating that it would be ‘this way’ to the Grand Canyon, and I dutifully followed said signs’ directions. A few miles down the road, I saw an animal crossing sign. The animal that was said to be crossing in that general area was not unlike deer, but with a somewhat unique quality.
A long while later, after stopping at a scenic view, and then turning on the road that would lead me to the Grand Canyon, I found myself on a long, winding, and quite hilly road. I was occasionally flanked by forest, at times burnt out,
at other times not, and also quite frequently surrounded by meadows. The meadows were large, expansive, and caused me to understand Bambi’s excitement at leaving the forest for the first time to play in the meadow. There were also signs that said very explicitly not to drive on the meadows. I’m guessing they’ve had trouble with that in the past. Many miles later, I arrived at the fee station at the park entrance. More miles later, I parked at the Grand Canyon parking lot. I got out of my truck and walked over to the nearest viewpoint. The viewpoint was not of the Grand Canyon. I was disappointed. Then, I walked over toward the visitor center area, and found drinking fountains, ice machines, bathrooms, and (various drink) vending machines. Something that caught my attention about these machines, however, was the size of the feet displayed on the front. Enormous!
And now for a series of pictures of the Grand Canyon (actually, I’m not entirely sure how accurate that statement is... because there were a lot of canyons in the area, and I’m not exactly sure which of them are part of, or merely connected to the Grand Canyon... in any event, there are some pretty neat views): This first one is from the north rim, looking to the west, I believe.
Here’s another view, which is looking east from basically the same location. I think I was looking at Bright Angel Point.
This view is after I’d gone out to Bright Angel Point and come back to the visitor center area. There were a lot more guard-railed viewpoints toward the visitor center.
This is pretty much the same view as that last one, but zoomed in a little, and without the fence in the frame.
Indeed, the canyon has rather a decent amount of Grand to it. I enjoyed the views that the north rim had to offer quite a bit, but felt that I needed to be moving along. First though, I felt I needed to check out the visitor center and various souvenir buying shops in the general vicinity. I walked through the lodge restaurant and there was a viewing room. You could sit in the room and look out at the canyon while remaining protected from the elements, but the odd thing, to me, was the fact that the majority of people in the room were either sleeping or... checking their eyelids for cracks. Either way, there were a lot of inactive, non-viewing people in that room. I continued on my way, went into the souvenir shop, the bookstore, saw the expensive prices at the restaurant, and continued on my way to my truck. When I got back to my truck, I left the North Rim, and began the two hundred some mile journey to get to the other side of the canyon. It began with a sixty plus mile trek back up the road I’d come down. Along the way I decided to stop and take some pictures of the meadows. Here is one such photograph:
The long trip up and around continued, and I saw many a sight. After I made my way out of the meadowlands and the burnt out forests and the national park area, I found myself on rather a windy mountain road descending into the lowlands. On this road, during one of it’s most winding stretches, there was a scenic lookout over the Vermillion Cliffs. They were tall, and kind of pinkish. What struck me, however, was this gigantic bug. It’s huge.
I didn’t really get any good photographs of the cliffs from there, but a little further down the road (once it straightened and leveled out) I stopped again and took some good ones. Here is a photograph or two of the Vermillion Cliffs:
This is another one, with which I was intending to depict the massive scale of these natural monstrosities. In this one, you can see lots of pebbles and small rocks that have rolled down off the cliff, right? Yeah, those are actually about the size of a car. Strange, isn’t it?
After yet another while of driving, I came across that which I sought. It was a bridge over the river Colorado. You have to go a pretty long way from the Grand Canyon to find one. And even when you do find one, it’s no small bridge. It’s not a bridge spanning a fifteen foot gap that soars to a height of 12 feet. No, no. The river that carved the Grand Canyon lies in a stunning, if only slightly less grand canyon some distance up river. Here’s the bridge:
And here’s the canyon:
And here’s the water’s edge:
The next major event of the day occurred when I passed out from under the shadow of those Vermillion Cliffs and into the shadow of those ominous clouds. Well, to be totally truthful, the lightning storm seemed kind of inconsequential until the clouds rolling over me and my truck turned a brownish gray, and stopped leaving moisture on my windshield. Something was different, but what? I had entered the Flagstaff area’s annual dust storm (according to the gas station attendant I asked).
The next one is basically the same but zoomed in. For some reason, I feel that both are worth including.
At that point I was still a fair distance away from the Grand Canyon again, but stopped at a lookout as I was climbing up to enter the park once again. Here’s the view:
After much winding and climbing, I reentered the Grand Canyon National Park. This time the fee booth was much closer to the parking lot and the view areas. I’ve heard that the south rim is much more popular if for no other reason than it is more accessible to a larger population (which I can understand), but I felt that the views were more spectacular and whatnot. It seems to sort of trivialize the views by tacking that ‘whatnot’ on there, but I put it there, and my intent was not to trivialize any such views. So there. And here’s a view from the south rim, looking west:
This is a photograph taken from the observation deck above the souvenir shop and connected to the lookout tower. I think I liked the outline of the structure in the center.
In the gift shop I couldn’t help but notice an oddly puzzling mystery book, presumably for kids:
I went back outside, and headed for my truck, when I saw what I thought would be a fantastically great photographing opportunity. Then, the instant before depressing the shutter button, a dude climbed into the frame! It turned a potentially great opportunity of visual awesomeness into a weirdly neat picture. I think it’s actually better this way.
Those same guys from a different angle:
I got back to my truck and headed up the rim trail road, stopping at the occasional viewpoint all along the way. At one, it became apparent that I wouldn’t make it to the next one before the sun went down, so I hung around and waited for the moment of sun’s setting. There was a really cute group of foreign children at the lookout, who insisted upon counting down to the sunset. What made them exceptionally cute, were the facts that they started from ten, got several of the numbers wrong, and had to start over about fifteen times before the sun finally went all the way down.
That was the last one I stopped at, because that’s when the darkness crept in. Slowly at first, but like a flashflood that cannot be stopped, the darkness soon became all enveloping. That is, until I got to the town outside of the park. That place was pretty bright and pretty busy. I didn’t stop.
I was planning on going all the way to the KoA in Williams if I didn’t find anything else along the way, but fortunately I did (Williams was another hour and a half or so away, and it was about 9 o’clock at that point). I found a campground, got advice from the hosts on which spots were best, found one, got myself situated, and then the hosts came around to collect the funds. Then I went to sleep. A Grand day, indeed.
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