My oldest son is getting ever closer to his high school graduation. He's in his junior year now, which means we only have about a year and a half of guaranteed time with him. Before he leaves us behind, one thing I've been trying to do is take him out to see those special places in the western United States that we feel someone ought to experience in their life. There's a lot of really cool things here; man-made things like Disneyland or the Golden Gate Bridge; or natural things like the Redwoods, Yosemite, or Yellowstone.
But head and shoulders above all that is one thing: The Grand Canyon. It's just a bigger deal than anything else, probably because it's so big. You might even say that it's grand.
We started our visit at the North Rim of the canyon. It was a beautiful drive as we grew closer. I would never have guessed that the road to the Grand Canyon would look like this:
I expected high desert the whole way, with rock cliffs and cacti. Instead, we were surrounded by a thick forest of tall Ponderosa pines. There was even some grasslands around the forest that were populated by a herd of buffalo. If my camera wasn't broken, I'd have tried to get a good picture of them. I didn't even bother with my phone, because they'd have been tiny dots in any picture it could take. They were pretty far away.
Soon, we made it to the entrance to the North Rim. I was pretty excited. I've never been to the Grand Canyon...okay, that's not true. This is a picture from the last time I visited the Grand Canyon:
I'm the little guy in the Brady Bunch pants on my mother's lap. I've changed a great deal since then, but this is a picture of the canyon from that time, and it hasn't changed a whole lot.
So, I've been there before, but it was beyond the scope of my memory. Someday, my youngest son--who is the same age I was in that picture above--will be writing a similar blog post about this trip.
I don't think I was the only one who was excited. I think we were all pretty excited as we pulled into the parking lot, and could see the canyon off to our left. We got out of the car, and walked straight over to the closest spot the canyon could be seen from.
My wife has a fear of cliffs, and was immediately freaked out. She forbid any of the kids from getting very close to the edge, and she positioned Little behind the tree so that he had no possibility of tumbling. Funny thing was, it wasn't much of a cliff at this point. Much more of a gradual hill. It would get much worse later...but then so would she.
The north side has a much different look than what I've become accustomed to from photos over the years. It's much more green. The North Rim is a higher altitude, and I think it gets more precipitation, so it shouldn't be a surprise at all.
We went down to the Grand Canyon Lodge, which closed for the season the week before, and looked at the canyon from the patio.
Then we took what would turn out to be our only hike of the trip. There was a trail that led down to a lookout spot for Bright Angel Point.
We made it to the end of the trail, which led to a platform where you could stand and take pictures or just gaze out at nature's wonder and feel small and insignificant.
As we walked the trail, we worked on Little's Junior Ranger badge worksheet. They have a badge that's just for the North Rim. We walked back, which was much harder than the walk there which had been pretty much all downhill, and when we got to the lodge again, we still weren't done. So, we sat down outside the lodge, and finished up the workbook. Little went into the visitor center and received his North Rim badge.
Then it was time to go. The only way to the South Rim was all the way around. If only we could hire a helicopter, it would be a ten or fifteen minute trip tops, but instead, we had four hours of driving ahead to get us to the South Rim.
Everybody was sick and tired of driving by the time we finally made it there. They'd decided that no canyon was so grand that it was worth driving so much to see. As we were coming into the park again on the south side, we were racing the sun. It would be a huge bummer to get there just too late to see anything, but that's pretty much what we did. We missed the sunset by fifteen or twenty minutes. We pulled into the very first viewpoint available, which is the Desert View tower.
A cool place, if it hadn't just closed ten minutes earlier. We were unable to go inside the tower, but we could still see the canyon with its extra warm colors from the fading sun.
And we managed to get a few pictures of the mighty Colorado River carving its way through the rock.
The tower itself was also particularly photogenic. It was very pretty in the fading light, and even my phone could make it look picturesque.
My wife was still freaked out about the cliffs, and there were a few arguments as the kids wanted to get closer to the edge, and she wanted them further away. She finally went off to sit on a bench out of sight, so she could handle being there.
It was pretty cool that we managed to get there just in time to see a nice view, and then cap it off with the sunset.
After taking a bunch of pictures, we got back in the car, and went looking for our accommodations. It was dark now, and they aren't into the streetlight thing in national parks, so it felt like we were feeling our way to the lodge, but we made it okay. The lodge was rustic, but still nice. They had a pizza pub that looked and smelled really amazing, but we'd brought all the food that we would need to make sure that this trip would be affordable, so we didn't go.
My daugher had a misconception of combined with a strange fascination with the pizza pub too. In her mind, she associated the word pub with a bar from the wild west instead of a place in England where you can order a pint glass. The kids had waited in the car while my wife and I went and checked in, so she hadn't seen (or smelled...mmmmm...) the place. She kept asking questions about it when I mentioned it.
"Does it have a long bar where people walk up to it and order sarsaparilla? And then the guy behind doesn't like their tone of voice, so he picks up a chair and hits him over the head with it?"
It went on like that for a while. I told her that it was complete bedlam when I walked past. One giant barroom brawl. She was a little unimpressed when she finally saw the place the next morning. It was closed at that time, so she couldn't even smell it.
We went to our room, set up all our beds, turned on the TV, and started cooking dinner on the electric frying pan we'd brought along. I joked with the kids, saying that they got the chicken quesadillas and Mom and I were going to the pizza pub, because we couldn't afford to bring them all, but we all ate quesadillas, and they were pretty tasty for being cooked in a frying pan on the bathroom counter of a hotel room.
We all laid back on the beds, and relaxed to an episode of 30 for 30 on ESPN about Maurice Claret's rise and fall. I was as amazed as you might be to this choice of show. My daughter was the one who chose it too. She said the selection was so meager, and at least she knew that 30 for 30s were good shows. I didn't know how she could know that, but I was happy to agree. I'd watch a 30 for 30 over just about anything else.
We turned it off and went to sleep early. I talked the three oldest into getting up with me at sunrise to go enjoy the spectacle at whatever the closest viewpoint was. They all grumbled, but agreed. I guess they figured it was worth missing out on a little sleep for the chance to see the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Not something you see every day after all.
So, morning came early. We dragged ourselves out of bed, got in the car, and drove to the first sign indicating a viewpoint. This one happened to be Yavapai Point. The place was crowded with people, which I suppose shouldn't be that surprising, but I was still surprised nonetheless.
It was really pretty, and we took a lot of pictures of the soft orange glow landing on the cliff walls.
I look pretty sleepy in this picture, don't I?
And fat, too.
We hadn't even been there for 24 hours yet, and we'd seen both the sunset and sunrise over the Grand Canyon. It was the kind of thing that many, many people live their entire life and never even come close to experiencing. It was something really special.
That last picture is probably my favorite. This one's cool too, with the rays flaring out as the sun peaks over the horizon.
And this one's nice too...
Eventually, the spectacle was over, and the kids wanted to get back to the hotel room to go back to bed, or eat breakfast, or take a shower, or something. So, I dropped them off.
I was wide awake now, so I wasn't interested in going to bed. Instead, I decided to walk from the hotel toward the canyon and see just what was close to us. We'd come in the night before in the pitch dark, so we had no idea yet.
Just down the street was Bright Angel Point, the South Rim companion to where we'd stopped on our way yesterday. They say that if you look carefully enough, you can see the buildings on the South Rim from the porch on the North Rim's Grand Canyon Lodge.
There is a trail down to the bottom of the canyon that starts at Bright Angel Point. A lot of people ride mules from rim to rim and some even hike it. I would have liked to have done that, but I'm not in shape to. They had signs all over the entrance to the trail warning people not to charge foolishly ahead if they weren't prepared, and I actually listened. I did walk a little ways down the trail, though, and I had to step aside as a train of mules passed me.
I stopped at this doorway chiseled through the rock and headed back up.
I'd probably only walked two or three hundred yards, but going back up that tiny bit wore me out. At the top of the hill I found an art museum that I thought my artist daughter would like a lot, so I vowed to bring her back later. I went back to the hotel to see if everyone was up and at 'em. They were about ready to go. My wife had cooked our eggs and toast, and it was waiting for me. I ate, then packed the car up, and we checked out of our room.
We walked back to where I had been looking around at Bright Angel Point, and caught the shuttle bus toward Hermit's Rest. The Little Guy was excited about the shuttle bus. He didn't get to ride in buses very often, so this was a special treat. The shuttle bus stopped at each viewpoint along the way, dropping people off and picking up new riders.
One of our bus drivers noticed all the Junior Ranger badges on his hat when he got on, and mentioned it over the loud speaker. Little thought that was pretty cool. From then on, he tried to point out his badges to each bus driver we had.
"I got a lot of badges," he said. "I'm a Junior Ranger."
The first stop we got off at was Maricopa point.
I definitely prefer the bare cliffs of the south side to the ones covered in green bushes on the north. Funny that just a few miles can make such a difference.
I tried to get a panoramic picture of each point that we stopped at. Be sure to click the image to see the large view, it should be worth it.
Next was Hopi Point.
And the panorama.
When we got on the bus after Hopi, it was pretty crowded. We all had to stand and hold the rails. The bus driver was a real bitch, too. She drove about halfway to the next viewpoint, then stopped the bus in the middle of the road. She got onto her PA system, and told us all that she had to stop the bus because the child that was in the stairwell had to get up onto the bus proper or she couldn't go any further. The kid quickly came up, and the bus continued on. Apparently, she couldn't have just asked the kid to come up the stairs without using the PA, or made that announcement as she drove, maybe asking please and saying she'd have to stop if she didn't. Instead she had to stop and embarrass the poor kid and his family. Some people.
We stopped at a viewpoint, and the bus emptied out a little bit. We weren't planning on getting off, but the bus driver yelled at us to get out of the way of the senior citizens(?) who were getting off, even though they were making their way around us just fine. Now that they were gone, my wife and some of the kids sat in the seats they'd previously occupied, but the bus driver wasn't going to let that happen. Though there were no senior citizens boarding the bus, she shouted at us and told us to stand back up because she needed those seats for senior citizens. She wanted us to stand up on the off chance that someone who would want those seats might get on the bus at the next stop I guess?
At this point, I'd had enough of this bus driver. The buses ran every fifteen minutes.
"You know what, we're getting off. Thanks."
We hadn't planned on seeing the Grand Canyon from The Abyss, but we did anyway.
The Abyss was nice. It was a small viewpoint, and we sat on a bench and complained about the bus driver as we all ate some fruit snacks. Everyone else who'd gotten off the bus silently chuckled along as they listened to our complaints. We weren't the only ones who'd felt that way.
While we waited for the next bus, we found the craziest beetle clinging to a tree by the bench we were sitting on. The thing had antennae that were at least three times as long as its body. What might this ugly bug do with such things. It must be the most sensitive beetle ever. Much more sensitive that Lennon ever was.
The next bus came along, and we hopped back on and rode it to Pima Point, where we'd originally meant to stop next before.
All Little wanted to do everywhere he went was climb. My wife was really worried about him falling, so she made him hold hands with someone anytime we were near the cliff's edge. After three viewpoints, I was exhausted with trying to keep an eye on him, so at Pima Point I decided to just take him away from the cliff and let him do his thing on the little wall by the bus stop.
He walked along it, balancing, and having a good time. It was a really low rock wall that doubled as a bench, probably only two feet tall or less, so it wasn't dangerous, like the cliff edges were. He came to a big gap in the wall, and impressed me by jumping all the way across without touching the ground.
Then he promptly fell off the wall onto his side on the asphalt. Whoops! I guess at least falling off that little wall was a lot better than falling off the cliff, so it surely could have been much worse.
Soon, the bus came along, and we rode it all all the way to the end of the line at Hermit's Rest.
Hermit's Rest had once been a way station for travelers a hundred years ago, but now it's just a gift shop and a snack bar with a few historical things that hearken back to its original purpose.
We didn't buy anything there. Instead, we caught the bus back to Bright Angel Point. My wife didn't want to walk down the trail at all, but was happy to look at the art museum. My artist daughter wasn't as taken by it as I thought she might be. I found some of the art there to be completely mesmerizing. I also pointed out to her how much each painting cost if you wanted to buy it. Even the smallest ones were worth hundreds. Maybe she could make a living as an artist after all.
One thing that did catch our eye was in their gift shop. They had the Junior Rangers vests for about $6 cheaper than we'd ever seen them before. We decided to get one for Little, and he couldn't have been more excited. Now he had the hat and the vest. He was an official Junior Ranger for sure.
It was time for lunch. We went and got in the car to head toward the picnic areas that were on the way to the Desert View Tower where we'd been yesterday. But before arriving there, we passed the South Rim Visitor Center. We had to stop, and do Little's workbook to earn his South Rim Junior Ranger badge. It took a while, and we all sat there while our stomach's grumbled, waiting until he'd finished all the requirements. At last he was ready to go to the ranger and be sworn in.
Now he had another badge. He pretty nearly had a hat full of them.
At last we could eat. We were super hungry. It was almost three in the afternoon by now. The sandwiches had never tasted so good.
There were several more points along the east side of the South Rim that we could see, but at this point, everyone was kind of wrung out and beat. We started driving toward the park exit, and as viewpoints came and went, we didn't feel like stopping. Finally, the fact that this may be my last time coming to the Grand Canyon niggled at my mind until I had to pull off at the next spot I saw. This was a pullout for a non-official viewpoint. This one was just called Duck on a Rock, because the rock formation out there looks like a duck...sitting on a rock.
It was just a wider spot in the road, not one you could stay at for long. We got back in the car and went to the next one, Grandview Point. This picture I think may be my best of the whole trip:
The blue sky and the fluffy white clouds above the orange grandeur of the canyon are just something else.
We started talking about rating the various national parks we had been to visit with our kids, asking each kid to give them up to five stars. I think the conversation began because of a memory I had of a
blog where they'd posted a bunch of one-star ratings that people had given to things like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.
Sadly, most of the kids gave the Grand Canyon a mere three stars. I had to add that the place itself deserves a five-star rating, but sometimes your experience of it leaves you wanting. I love to hike, and we'd done precious little of it here. Maybe if we'd taken mules to the bottom of the canyon, or taken a raft down the Colorado River right through the middle of the canyon, it would have deserved a five-star rating for the experience, but just stopping at various points, looking and taking pictures, probably didn't deserve that high of a rating.
I think the kids rated Zion and Black Canyon of the Gunnison as the two highest in their estimation.
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Zion National Park
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Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park
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My wife and I gave Yellowstone a high rating, but the kids were so young that they barely remember going there and what they saw, so they couldn't agree with us or not.
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Yellowstone National Park
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Grandview Point was our second to last stop.
Some crazy stuff was going on at that place. People were risking life and limb to get that perfect picture, and at one point my wife had to leave where she was because she couldn't stand by and watch someone die as they tried jumping from one rock out to the next rock to get that great shot. Luckily, the woman's friends talked her out of doing so, and there was no death to be witnessed, but my wife had had about enough of that feeling twisting her guts into a wad. I guess my enthusiasm had waned for this too.
Before going, we had to stop back in at the Desert View Tower and climb it up to the top. The windows at the top kept the view from up there from being that awesome, but I'm sure my wife appreciated that there was no danger to worry about for once. There was also a patio on the roof of the main floor that you could stand on and look down at the canyon, but the best view was all the way down at the viewpoint.
We looked for a while, then went to the gift shop for one final look around. I got my patch for my collection:
After that, we hit the road. It was a long four hour drive back to my sister's house where we were supposed to stay that night. It really was a long and awful drive. We thought it was bad on the way there, but it was way worse in the dark. We made it there in one piece and awake and everything. Then in the morning, we headed back home. And there it was. We could cross another item off the bucket list.
