I’d wanted to go out to Arizona for quite some time, with the primary goal to be seeing the Grand Canyon. Short of stopping through Phoenix airport, and the tiny corner of the state you drive through to get to Zion, I’d never even been in Arizona at all before. Erin and I drove out on March 25, 2009. We met up with Alex, Beth, and Dave just south of the Grand Canyon. We spent two (cold) nights camping there, doing a day hike in the canyon. We then drove out to Petrified Forest National Park, stopping on the way to check out the Wupatki Pueblo and the Sunset Crater National Monuments. We spent one night camping in the Painted Desert in Petrified Forest, then checked out a bunch of sights in the southern side of the park before heading back to Phoenix. We spent one night there, before Erin and I drove back to CA and Alex, Beth and Dave flew off to their respective homes.
the canyon, oh yes.
Arizona interstate speed limit seemed ok
On March 25, Erin and I drove out to Arizona, heading east on I-40. It was a pretty nice drive, though for part of it we were driving through a part of the desert that is apparently a giant moth breeding ground, and there were thousands if not millions of these suckers flying everywhere, including getting sucked into the wind vortices of all the cars heading through on the highway. When I made it out the other end, it looked like my car had been pelted with packets of mustard! That stuff streaked up but nasty. Cleaning it off when we stopped for gas took some doing. We stopped in Williams, AZ where we went to the supermarket, and met up with Beth, Alex, and Dave.
man, those suckers were *all over* my car
From there, we all headed north towards the park. First the drive is through scrub desert, but as you start approaching the park environs, it is a bit more wooded. We saw a few of the park elk as we were driving in. The other car stopped to take a view of the canyon, and we went and got our campsite. All of us, as well, checked out the main store/gift shop in the village. Good times. That night we all went out to one of the viewpoints where they were having a star talk, which was a cold, cold evening, but with some truly spectacular views.
The next morning, we headed to the canyon itself and headed out on one of the main trails down into the canyon, Bright Angel trail. We got a pretty early start on the hike, and it was pretty windy and rather brisk up at the rim of the canyon, but the wind cut off very shortly after entering the canyon, and it also got a bit warmer as we headed down (though stayed well within good hiking temperatures). From the get-go, we were pretty much struck with how fabulous the views were. “This is so grand” we kept saying (our humor levels were really impressive).
That was one large wall. Larger than the people. Shocking!
Anyway, this trail weaves back and forth across the canyon walls as it heads down, and is nice and wide and well graded. There are many many signs as you go suggesting you not go all the way to the bottom on a day hike. Alex took a photo next to one of them. But some of the warning images are really rather hilarious, talking about how big strong people fail at trying to do this all the time. Admittedly, despite it being very very hot in high summer, the peak visitation of the park is during June/July/August when I think many people manage to get themselves into a fair amount of trouble.
they were big on this being a problem (also, Alex posed with it)
As it warmed up, we stopped pretty early to shed some bonus clothing layers, then continued. We were passed by a mule-train heading down, and we hop-scotched with them for a bit until we passed them for good when they stopped for a view and a bit of a talk, and we continued from there.
mule riders, taking a break
As one of the main trails into the canyon, it is a fairly well populated route, even this early in the season. We saw plenty of people both coming and going, but it absolutely could not detract from the amazing beauty we were seeing. The only thing I generally found unusual about the vistas is that they were more or less all form one viewpoint, since the trail provided access to the canyon in a specific direction.
As we headed down, we could clearly see very sharp demarcations in rock types in the walls, which was pretty awesome. As a main trail, there are several clear breakpoints along the way, which I imagine help some people decide when they might want to turn around, but also gave us good snapshots of the kind of progress we were making. The first marker is at 1.5 miles, where I took a photo of the thermometer showing it to be 50 degrees. There is a bathroom just by this point, which is nice, since the canyon trail doesn’t have a lot of hiding opints.
Alex shooting a change in the stone
We continued down fairly uneventfully, getting to the 3 mile resthouse. There were lots of people taking a break here, and I stopped for a couple of minutes, but generally just kept heading down. After that point, the trail does get a bit steeper, but you shortly get to an area where the trail flattens out a bit, as you reach an intra-canyon plateau.
bottom – optional. top – mandatory.
At some point Beth and Alex had gone ahead of us, but for the first time in very ever, I had thought to actually bring my walkie-talkies, and we knew what was up. Erin, Dave, and I just ambled along this flatter area until we hit Indian Garden, which is both a campsite and restroom, eating, and general pausing location, and, in fact, had been an area where Indians had lived and farmed for many many years. At that point, the weather was looking, well, not terrible, but a little iffy, and we had gone 4.5 miles and lost 3000′ of elevation. We decided for the better part of valor, and while having very minor qualms about Beth and Alex having headed down to the river (and even more minor qualms about not doing so ourselves – who knew when we would have the opportunity again!) we headed back up.
The place where we turned around. Please!!
We clearly need a flagpole down there.
The trip back was was fairly uneventful, and while it might have been nice to go down all the way, my legs were definitely pretty sore by the time we made it back up to the rim. Of course, however, on the way up, the weather turned fabulous again. Oh well – what do you know. Anyway, once we got back to the rim, we checked out the Kolb photography studio, we ate a bit then waited at one of the lodges until Beth and Alex showed up again.
the view as we looked back down canyon
That night was full of fun and special adventures. We were trying to make dinner, and for some reason the fuel bottle wouldn’t prime. Alex was saying that it was “leaking” and I was checking the knob you open and close to adjust the fuel pressure, and was trying to pump up the bottle, only to determine that the open joint was between the entire bottle and the fuel pump, so in determining this I got a fair amount of white gas on my hands. Dinner occurred successfully, after which we made a fire. I was getting down nice and close to the flames and blowing on them to fan the fire, when one of my gloves caught fire – I guess there was enough gas fumes in there to burn. I jumped up, shouting a bit, and of course tried to slap at it with my other gloved hand…which also promptly caught on fire. So, my head filled with thoughts of melting plastic fusing to my hands, I run screaming off a bit toward the trees, shaking my hands violently. One of my gloves flew off, and the other I pressed up against a tree until it went out. I examined my hands – no problems. I examine my gloves…also no problem. Huh. Guess all the fumes were at the surface of the material.
frozen water is…pretty, I guess?
beth displays her reef fish for me
After that, it was really getting kind of bitterly cold, so we headed over to an indoors ranger talk. I don’t really remember the topic, but part of the discussion centered on injuries people got in the Grand Canyon. The ranger commented that there had been only five snake bites in the prior year – four of them in the hand. Yes. Because people were reaching out their hand towards the snakes. The fifth? The fifth was a second bite on one of the people who’d already been bitten in the hand. Ouch.
The next morning, when we woke up, there were a couple of fun discoveries – the first being that our water had frozen overnight. The second, when we started packing our backpacks for the camping we’d be doing that night, Beth discovered that in the pack she had carried all the way down and up the Canyon the prior day was “Reef Fish of the Caribbean”, a book apparently so dense that she gets in trouble if she takes it through airport X-rays! As she put it, “I thought my pack was a bit heavy!”. We then headed out east, along the Desert View Drive, along the South Rim of the Canyon. We stopped at the vista points to take some photos, and it was still definitely a bit brisk out. We then stopped at the Desert View Watchtower, which was modelled after other structures found in the Southwest. There was some attractive art, interesting exhibits, and really even more fabulous views inside and around, including a clear view of a cinder cone off the east, in a landscape you don’t normally think of as too volcanic (even though you’d be wrong). After this point, we got some quite bad coffee, and headed east out of the park, onwards to further amazing things.
aren’t we a happy, shiny, windy, somewhat cold looking group?
right in the middle there, is the brown ribbon of the Colorado
We can see the Watchtower over there. Ayup.
Volcanic! (or “cindrical!”)
Do the painted animals dive into the painted electrical plug face? Who knows!
