Well,
this is the "giant elephant" among the national parks - it is so
big that it is hard to see anything but a small part of it. This has the odd
effect of making the first impression sometimes somewhat less than one would
expect - the place from most of its overlooks is just too large to
comprehend. Telling yourself that the other rim is 10 to15 MILES away, and
that the river is a MILE below you may begin to make a dent in your lack of
comprehension, but maybe not. But the more you look, the more you see, and
then the Grand Canyon becomes overwhelmingly large and beautiful, with a
variety and scale not seen anywhere else.
Unfortunately,
with so much air between you and the colorful rock walls miles away, air
clarity is a large consideration in how intense the color looks. We found
that when we were there, the best color was at mid-day, which is not
considered the best time for seeing the forms in the canyon - but what can
you do…? Even with the muted, bluish color, though, this is one heck of a
spectacular and beautiful place!
In
the early 1960s, David took the Bright Angel trail to the river (about a
mile total elevation change, and a LONG walk!) and then across the river to
the ranch. He found then that moving down through the many colored rock
layers, finally to the dark, twisted, ancient rock of the inner canyon, was
a far more meaningful way to experience the canyon than looking at it from
above - but even that is wonderful! To satisfy a bit of nostalgia for David,
we took a short walk down the Bright Angel trail the first evening (photo 4
shows the trail head - and photo 7 shows a branch off the Bright Angel
Trail to a viewpoint overlooking an inner canyon branch, and also visible
are parts of the trail that lead down the 1500' elevation from the plateau
to the river following the narrow green area). The panorama photo clearly
shows the dark inner canyon. Travel west along the rim from the trail head
is mostly by bus (bumpy and with poor scheduling at the not very well marked
stops, so much time is wasted making sure you catch the bus) or on foot (one
"short" walk involved a long detour around an old mining structure
that was not marked on the map). We did see six California condors in flight
below us - but of course David had the wrong lens on at the time (Bob got
one, though, in photo 14). One evening we watched the sunset from an
overlook a few miles east of Grand canyon Village. Some others were also
watching it from a rocky ledge below us (see photos 24 and 25).
As
with many of the western national parks, it is up to the visitor to be aware
of dangers such as falling from high cliffs without railings or markings,
drowning in slot canyons due to flash floods downstream of thunderstorms,
lightning strikes, and dehydration and sunburn from exposure to the very
high heat, low humidity, and intense sunshine in the southwest. In these
amazing places, it is tempting to push some limits a bit (and David had done
his share of stupid things) to see even more (David is now VERY conservative
about these things, as we watched with a bit of horror what some people were
doing [photo 10, for one…]).
After
two nights at a rather grand motel just outside the park south entrance, we
drove along the south rim on the way to the north rim. We stopped and looked
at the green water of the Colorado River where the bridge crosses it (photos
27 and 28), then drove toward the north rim, which is about 1000 feet higher
than the south rim. The snow had been cleared enough to get in only a few
weeks before, and there was still some standing water in the high meadows.
The forest was dense as we moved toward the rim. Distances here are large,
and the nearest overlook (photos 29, 30, and 31) was 40 miles from where we
stayed (in a cabin with the smallest bathroom imaginable - and I have seen
some tiny ones in the past!). We both agreed that Grand Canyon, Arches, and
Zion were the "do not miss" parks on this trip, and for the return
trip to Las Vegas, we decided to continue up to Zion again and to take Route 9
across it once more - and it was worth it! David took pictures out the
window of the car with his film camera as we went again through the pass in
NW Arizona on Interstate 15. Timing was good for it, so we once again stopped in
Mesquite for 99 cent spaghetti dinners before driving on down near the edge
of Lake Mead to Hoover Dam.
