Category Archives: Travel

The Long Suffering Wife and I had spent a most wonderful first day at the Grand Canyon, taking a bus tour out to the west with stops at Hopi Point, Mohave Point, and Trail View Point (see below). I walked along the rim in the village. We had a wonderful anniversary dinner and saw many nocturnal mule deer after a wonderful sunset. We stayed in one of the cabins  near the rim and the train station, then prepared for Day Two. (FYI, if you don’t feel like walking around in the dark, they have taxis. But if you’re a walker, it’s not that big of a place, it’s safe, and it can be marvelous at night.)

On the second day we had hours to go before the train left to go back to Williams, so we caught a different bus (but with the same driver — and the same jokes) that went out to the east along the rim.

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You can see the points to the west of the village where we stopped on Day One but to start Day Two we’re waaaaaay out there on the right. (Check the scale on the map. “Waaaaaay” is all of about two miles and might have taken five minutes on the bus…)

Yaki Point, looking back to the west. The Village is out of sight from here, but at the bottom of the picture you can see one of the many scrub jays that will hang out around the viewpoint areas. They didn’t seem too intimidated by people, so I’m guessing they were looking for handouts. Like “Grand Canyon pigeons”.

Looking east from Yaki Point.

Many, many, many, many, many, many, many layers of sedimentary rock laid bare.

At the lower left of this picture you can see a trail’s switchbacks winding down that promontory of rock and then heading out across that lower mesa. I believe that’s the South Kaibab Trail.

These bristlecone pines have a tough existence up here on the rim. It’s arid and dry, windy, hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and there’s no soil, only rock. This one might have been hundreds of years old, but I think it finally lost this fight.

Anywhere a seed can land and get a foothold, some tough plant or the other will give it a shot.

At most of the viewpoints we just looked around at the conventional viewing sites next to the parking lots. Here I wandered off along the rim for a bit, being very careful and watching out for rattlesnakes. (You have your phobias, I have mine.) There weren’t any signs saying that I couldn’t or warning me that I would die if I did, but I didn’t get all that close to the edge, just in case.

It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end, and I don’t bounce as well as I used to.

It had been a long first day at the Grand Canyon. We had ridden the train up from Williams (did I forget to tell you about that and show those pictures?), followed by a bus tour  to the west of the South Rim Village, including stops at Hopi Point, Mohave Point, and Trail View Point. Then I took a small hike for a quarter mile or so (maybe a little more) along the rim in the village itself.

I had mentioned that there are some shows and historical buildings in the village.

Google Maps

I had mentioned that there are historical buildings in the village. (There are also some “southwestern style” commercial shops and restaurants as well, but even *I* didn’t take pictures of them.) This is the Hopi House.

Kachina Lodge

There were outdoor theaters with shows.

Toward sundown we headed to Kolb Studio, which sits atop a promontory of  rock that sticks out from the rim at the west end of the village. (You can see another picture of it in Part Four.) The art studio and shops are up on top, but there are two or three terraces down below that you can go down to. Fair warning — the terraces are not exactly “handicapped accessible”. There are stairs and they’re not particularly steep or hard, but they are irregular, narrow, and cut into the rock face, so if you have mobility issues they may be a challenge.

Toward sunset the canyon takes on a completely different view.

Here’s that lower plateau and canyon with the Bright Angel Trail crossing it, now deep in shadow.

It starts to cool quickly, even in the summer, and the sky gets hazy.

You start to see more blues, purples, and bright oranges as the reds and browns fade.

The dynamic range needed on your photos starts to go through the roof. How do you deal with that? (Hint: Digital photos are cheap, so…)

Following this we had a great anniversary dinner at one of the first rate restaurants there. (Make reservations for one of the good restaurants if you don’t want to be eating at a coffee shop or fast food place.) The food was fantastic and they gave us a window seat looking right out over the canyon as darkness fell.

When it gets dark, first of all, be careful you don’t do something rash and go over the edge, it’s a long way down. There are guardrails, of course, but they’re just waist high and they were no doubt built before I society became so litigious and forgot what common sense was. But stay up by the rim in the village if you can. Find a place to sit and relax.

If it’s not cloudy, the stars will be freaking fantastic! There are a few lights in the village so it’s not quite an astronomically dark spot, but compared to any big city, you will see orders of magnitude more stars. In the summer, you’ll see how the Milky Way got its name. If you’ve never been in a dark sky location, you’re in for a treat that rivals the Canyon.

What caught us by surprise after dinner were the deer. Once it gets dark, the mule deer come out to feed. They love the plants and flowers that the landscaping staff at the village work so hard on and they’re used to people being around. They’re not tame – leave them alone, don’t try to pet them or something silly. But don’t freak out when all of a sudden you notice a dozen or more ghost-like, horse-sized shapes shuffling around you just at the edge of the lights. Yet another aspect of a totally mesmerizing place!

Once we finished our first afternoon’s bus tour heading west from the South Rim Village, including stops at Hopi Point, Mohave Point, and Trail View Point, we took a stroll along the rim in the village itself. Back away from the rim are all of the lodges, parking lots, camping sites, and visitor centers. Along the actual rim are plenty of parks and open seating areas, as well as museums, theaters, historical buildings, restaurants, cafes, and shops. I started at the west end of the village just to the east of Kolb Studio and proceeded to walk east (a little bit uphill, not bad) about three-quarters of a mile, which put me up along the rim near the train station.

Google Maps

The sinuous nature of the rim and the way the village is located at the center of a giant horseshoe-shaped curve are obvious here. On the tip of the plateau seen here (upper right) is where Maricopa Point is located, with Hopi Point off in the distance around the other side from there. About half way out on that escarpment you can see Trail View Point. (In Part Three we were there looking back here — this is the reverse of that.)

Sticking out on a finger of rock is the Kolb Studio. Right on the far side of the studio is the trailhead for the Bright Angel Trail going down into the Canyon. It’s worth walking down to the studio to see the artwork there, as well as the views from the lower terraces you can see.

Way out in the distance, at the bottom of the Canyon, you can see bits and pieces of the rapids and river bed. The water appears brown or greenish-grey due to the large amount of silt and sediment being carried. White spots on the river mark where the rapids are.

Having walked up to the east a ways, you get a slightly different perspective. It’s amazing how different things can look just by moving a few hundred yards, as well as having a bit of time passing with the shadows shifting and colors changing with the light.

The landscape view…

…and the portrait view of the side canyon that the Bright Angel Trail runs through. The trail is the lighter, almost white line that tracks across the lower plateau for several miles before again plunging a couple thousand feet. At the bottom of the side canyon, just where the path starts to go into the trees, you can barely see a few outbuildings. These are about the only buildings currently down in the canyon, there to provide a minimal amount of help and a resting area to hikers.

It doesn’t take long at the Canyon to figure that you could live there year-round for a long, long time and never get tired of seeing it.

On our bus tour on our first day at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, we visited Hopi Point and Mohave Point. From there, the bus headed back to the Grand Canyon Village and stopped at Trail View Point.

Google Maps

The squiggly white line across the lower mesa is the Bright Angel hiking trail down to the bottom of the Canyon from the South Rim Village. As you can see, you descend a couple thousand feet to get down to this lower plateau, hike a couple of miles, then pretty much drop over that far cliff and down another few thousand feet. The total hiking distance is only 9.3 miles, but the total vertical drop is over 5,000 feet – and then you get to hike back up. I would love to do it someday, but I’ll need to be in better shape than I am now.

The South Rim Village is built at the edge of the Canyon, near the center of a huge horseshoe-shaped bend, so that there are “arms” of land sticking out to both the east and west of the Village. Trailview Point is on this western arm of land, and here we can look back and see the Village, perched on the edge.Embiggenate this picture to see most of the South Rim Village on the top of the mesa, with the Canyon falling away below it. You can also clearly see the Bright Angel trail descending down from the Village. Even if you can’t hike all the way down to the river, it’s not too terribly strenuous to hike down a half mile or so (YMMV!) always keeping in mind that you have to go back up.

As spectacular as the scenery was, one of the best highlights of the day was seeing a pair of condors soaring in the thermals rising up just off the edge of the cliff. The both came within fifty feet or so of us as they circled up from below the rim, riding the thermal until they were way over our heads. I had never seen on in the wild – they were spectacular, and HUGE. Watching them was special.

When we last saw our vacation couple at the Grand Canyon, we were at Hopi Point on the afternoon bus tour. From there, we went to Mohave Point.

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Remember to click on any picture to get the full-sized version.

As you can see, every view at every stop is new and different. Endless variety in how you see the canyon, the outcroppings, the geologic layers. Infinite changes to it all as the lighting changes from hour to hour, minute to minute.

I’ve recently shared photos from northern Arizona showing Oak Creek Canyon on Arizona Route 89A and the town of Sedona. When the Long-Suffering Wife and I were in those places, we were taking the long way home coming from the Grand Canyon.

I can not emphasize this enough — if you never visited the Grand Canyon, it MUST be on a trip somewhere in your future.

The Grand Canyon, even in a two-day visit to just hit the most popular, easily accessible sites on the South Rim, is way, way too big of a subject for just one post. (I take a lot of pictures.) We’ll spread these out a bit.

We made reservations for one of the lodges at the South Rim and rode the train up from Williams, Arizona. (This is a great way to do it, highly recommended.) But you can also just drive up there in your own car and camp or stay at a lodge. (Well, you can’t right now because of the Freakin’ Idiots in Washington, but once all of our “leaders” all get back on their meds you’ll be able to.) Once you get to the village there, you can take a couple of different bus tours that go to different parts of the South Rim, all within a couple dozen miles east or west of the Village.

For the record, there are a ton of other ways to see the Canyon and other things you can do there, depending on your schedule and physical conditioning. You can walk trails down to the bottom of the Canyon – but then you’ve got to walk back up. (This is seriously non-trivial.) You can also just walk down a trail a quarter mile, half mile, a mile or two, whatever, and then walk back up. You can camp out (with permits) at the bottom of the Canyon.

You can go to the North Rim instead of the South Rim – much more out of the way, a much longer drive to get there and get back out, much more isolated, but a truly incredible place to visit in its own right.

The areas around the two rim villages are just a tiny part of the park itself. There are plenty of other camping, hiking, and sightseeing places in the park. But the South Rim Village area is where about 95% of the tourists go. (I can’t even get links to work right now to send you to the appropriate National Park Service web sites because of this idiocy in DC – google it when the sites come back online.)

These pictures are from the first area that our first bus stopped at, Hopi Point.

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