Misspent dotage: Grand and other Canyons (14-15 April 2019)

It would be ridiculous to visit the West and not go to the Grand Canyon, if only to see what all the fuss is about. It's one of the most famous natural wonders on the planet.

From Holbrook we travelled West on I-40. We generally avoid the interstate highways, but this one was OK. It was fairly busy but did not merge or divide so we could chug along in the 'slow' lane at 50mph and not worry about changing lanes.

If we knew when we took this photograph what enterprise occupies this idiosyncratic building and tipis we have since forgotten it.

I-40 goes to Flagstaff, Arizona's capital city, but our route turned North well before the city centre and we quickly left the built up area behind.

A trio of elk we encountered on our way to the Canyon.

There are campgrounds in the National Park, but only one of them has RV hookups and that is privately run. The national park web site warns that it is booked up months in advance so we didn't even bother to find out how much it charges. That invaluable app, WikiCamps, directed us to a freedom camping site just outside Tusayan, south of the Canyon.

Free camping under the trees.

If we had known better what to expect we would have got up earlier and hurried. Millions of people visit the Grand Canyon every year and there are large parking lots, but they can fill up quickly. Spaces for RVs are very limited, and drivers of regular cars get frustrated searching for regular parking in Parking Lot 1 with the result that RV spaces get filled with all sorts of vehicles. While understanding the frustration we did get a bit ticked off because there was plenty of space for cars in 3 other parking lots, but none for RVs. Luckily we found enough space to park without causing an obstruction.

Walking towards the rim there was a feeling of apprehension. This place is super-famous. Will it live up to its reputation and our expectations? We had the same nerves when we visited the Taj Mahal.

We arrived at the rim and looked. WOW. It is huge. There was no disappointment. It was much better being there than seeing pictures in magazines or on television. Just like the Taj Mahal.

All we can put in this blog are some of our own pictures. They don't convey the full impression, but it's the best we can do. The scenery is somehow much brighter. The Colorado River has scoured out a wildly meandering course with erratically eroded layers of differing rocks. The effect is to drag the eye from jagged promontories to scree slopes to random curves and angles. Maybe it's because we live in a hilly country, but the absolutely horizontal top layer of the canyon rocks seemed unnatural at first.

There is a paved, accessible, path along the South Rim. There are several overlooks with sensible railings, although there are still people that just have to perch on unfenced cliff edges and take a selfie. About a week after we were there, a father set up a camera for a family photo on the edge of the canyon. He set the delayed shutter release and ran to take up a position behind the others. And slipped. And died. We didn't witness anything quite so imbecilic, but there were plenty of folk taking silly risks.

The river is only visible from a few positions on the rim. This angle also includes the only bridge over the Colorado River for many miles.

The National Park Service is to be congratulated on the information provided. Not only in the visitor centres but also on boards along the path. The geology is quite complicated, and we don't claim to have absorbed it all, but the careful student can learn how the various layers of rock were laid down over an estimated 1660 million years and how the Colorado River has dug the canyon.

These boards are from a series that marks the different rock layers on images of the canyon beyond so that the viewer can properly understand where each one begins and ends.

There are samples of many types of rock, particularly from the older, lower layers, to improve understanding of what is down there.

This was the first national park where we encountered a shuttle bus system. The buses are free. They give the visitor the scope to visit distant parts of the rim without driving and without having to walk both ways. We walked part of the rim path, then took the shuttle further along, walked some more and finally took the shuttle back to the parking lot.

This is depressing. Visitors have be told that birds will swallow coins and asked not to throw coins or other litter into the canyon. Just beyond this board was a rock pillar on which many, presumably illiterate, people had thrown coins. They probably could be removed using a vacuum cleaner with a very long pipe, but why should a ranger have to go beyond the safety of the rails to do such a task?

There is definitely a main area around Grand Canyon Village, but there are several interesting places to stop on the road to the East. One of them is the site of a former Puebloan settlement.

The kiva, where religious and other ceremonies took place.

It was a bit easier to see the river from the upstream outlooks.

If you look VERY carefully you can see the fissure of the upstream canyon in the distant plain.

The day was dominated by geology, but of course we noticed some wildflowers.

And birds. This is a common raven. We also spotted a White-breasted Nuthatch near Grand Canyon Village.

It is possible to get to the North Rim, but it's a lot more driving and we strongly suspect that the views are very similar.

We didn't return to our previous campsite. Leaving the park to the East it wasn't a long drive to another forest road with shaded places to pull off. They were much smaller sites, the ground was badly rutted and it was difficult to manoeuvre Gregory, but we managed to get level enough for a comfortable night. For some reason we didn't photograph this location.

The next day we carried along the road and, surprise!, there were places to pull off and enjoy the views of a canyon. The river that excavated this canyon is the Little Colorado, a tributary of the bigger, more famous Colorado River, whose work we had marvelled at the previous day.

The horizontal top layer goes on.

Where did those hills come from?

How did this trickle dig such a big canyon?

Either there were more flowers around this canyon, or we were so overwhelmed by the big pictures at Grand Canyon that we overlooked them. We took many more photographs of plants around the Little Colorado Canyon.