As I mentioned before, the hotel we were staying at in Page, AZ, seemed to be brand new. Additionally, they had a good hot breakfast. The breakfast location downstairs was crowded even early in the morning with a lot of tourists who seemed to be getting ready for outdoor activities. Lots of people from other countries! We even saw some people from India who were up early. Page was the first place during our trip when we started seeing a lot of Indians.
We got an early start leaving for the location of Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado river, just a few minutes outside of town. Unfortunately the parking lot was already starting to get full that early. Buses seemed to be disgorging droves of Chinese tourists, and of course there were people of all other nationalities, all climbing the hill from the parking lot to get to the spot to see the horseshoe bend. It was a crazy scene. People were stopping all over the place to take pictures of their families. Folks were marching along with selfie sticks in their hand. One guy even had a GoPro video camera attached to his head as he walked. I took my pictures and we fled the scene!
It was only then that Teresa realized that we had left our leftover pizza from last night that was going to be our lunch today back in the fridge in the hotel. Rather than waste food, we took a quick detour back to the hotel to retrieve the leftovers before we finally began our trip to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.
We headed south on US 89. As some point the road dropped from the high plain that we were on to a big valley below through a cut in the rock.
At the bottom of the hill, we turned off US 89 on to US 89A heading north through the valley. You an see the gap in the hillside that we had driven through earlier.
We were surrounded by colorful cliffs as we drove into the valley in a direction that seemed to have no way out of the valley. Here are the Vermillion Cliffs that we were driving towards.
The road started to loop around at the end of the valley, and we crossed the Colorado river at Marble Canyon. The bridge to the left is called Navajo Bridge. It was built in the 1920s. The one on the right is the more modern replacement built in 1995 for handling today’s traffic. It was deliberately built in the style of the original bridge. The Navajo bridge is considered the 9th highest bridge in the US. You can walk on the bridge today, and The US Department of the Interior maintains an Interpretive Center beside the bridge, which is where I took this picture from.
The road now turns south and runs beside Vermillion Cliffs. You pass the small town of Lees Ferry.
At the southern end of the Vermillion Cliffs you pass by a place where Cliff dwellers used to live.
The road then turns right and heads west through the valley towards the distant plateau and the Kaibab National Forest. The whole time the speed limit on the road remains at 65 miles per hour, but the moment it enters National parkland and starts winding its way up and into the the mountains on the other side of the valley, it becomes slow once again. The vegetation begins to change as you climb and you start to see evergreens all around you. We are out of the plains!
In a short while you reach an intersection at Jacob Lake, and you turn left to head south on Arizona Highway 67 into the Grand Canyon National Park. On the way one passes through a section of Kaibab that seems to have suffered a lot of fire damage. You pass high altitude meadows lined by evergreens with a lot of open space beside the road. It takes about an hour to get to the entrance of the park.
As we were driving toward the Visitor Center, we saw something happen on the winding roads that was unexpected. We were headed downhill when we thought we saw a car cross the road below us. Both of us thought there must be another road at the bottom of the hill. It turned out that the car had actually run off the road and down the slope on the side of the road into some trees. I caught a quick glimpse of the vehicle as we went by. The front seemed to be smashed in. The vehicle in front of us had managed to find a narrow space to pull over to help, but I could see no place to pull over myself. There seemed to be no cellphone coverage at that point. We proceeded toward to the Visitor Center with haste to report the incident. We were a little shaken up ourselves. We found out later in the day that the people in the car were OK. That was a relief.
I had managed to find a parking spot close to the visitor center. There were a lot of people visiting. I was surprised because the north rim is considered less accessible and popular than the south rim. (Incidentally, it is over 200 miles by road to get from one to the other, even though the absolute distance between the two spots is much less. You have to get around the canyon!)
We found a place to consume our cold pizza near the parking lot and proceeded to the Bright Angel Point trail. This very short trail is deceptively challenging. There are some steep slopes, but the more difficult aspect is dealing with the fear of heights. You are walking on a narrow ledge over a very deep canyon. They have handrails in the sections where there are drop offs on both sides, but otherwise you are exposed and you have to watch out for the mind games that may prevent you from making progress. At the end of the walk you end up standing in an open space overlooking the canyon on three sides. It is stunning!
It is actually scary to see scenes like this while you are walking this trail.
You get an idea of scale when you see the people on the ledge at the upper right side of the picture below.
A few of the mountains in front of us are named after Hindu gods. All the way in the background is the southern rim of the canyon. The Visitor Center for the South Rim is closer to the right side of the picture. The Colorado river flows in the canyon closer to the south rim.
There are not many trails to walk on the ridge on which the Visitor Center is located. We ended up doing a short loop going out on the Trancept Trail and returning on the Bridle path. On the way we passed some deer (I think they are mule deer) close to the trail. They were not afraid of us.
The aspen trees look very beautiful this time of year.
There are other very challenging trails on the northern rim if one wanders away from the visitors center, including the north Kaibab Trail that you can use to get to the bottom of the canyon and perhaps cross over to the other side. But we were done with hiking for the day! We drove out and took a side road to Imperial point, the highest point in the Grand Canyon (8803 feet). The wind was howling as we got out of the car and the temperatures were beginning to fall precipitously. We did not spend too much time outside.
And then it was time to head towards Kanab, UT, our stop for the night.
The sun was setting as we approached Fredonia, the town on US 89A at the northern border of Arizona. We entered Kanab immediately as we crossed the border and found out hotel at the southern edge of town. Once again, it looked like a brand new facility. We are spending two nights here.
Having left Navajo country some time early during the day, we had crossed back into our original time zone, which meant that it was later in the day that I expected.
We went around looking for a place to eat and realized too late that most places were closed, most likely because it was Sunday evening. The town looked small, but the broad roads and its wide blocks with smaller one story buildings also gave it a sense of emptiness on this Sunday evening. We did find a Subway eventually and got some food to bring back to the hotel.
We are visiting the nearby Zion National Park today. The temperature is below freezing right now, but there is nothing we can do about that. It will get warmer during the day. We will head out as soon as we are ready.
Splattered Brains 