Grand Canyon

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Today is Grand Canyon Day. We decided to go only to the north rim, mainly because we have already seen so many canyons and secondly because the south rim is a lot farther away. We’ve been riding so much lately. It’s a big trip to go anywhere out here, 200-300 miles one way. We drove south on 15 by New Harmony, the area where the fire is burning. The fire is halfway up the mountain, about 22 miles from our campground. However, Monday morning I had ashes along the bottom of my window frames on my car.

We saw some pretty white flowering bushes with a gecko sunnying himself nearby.

Also, we found a hubcap for Frank!

I found my dream house, it’s called a sand castle…

We stopped at Pipe Springs, a national historic monument. Boy, our Senior Pass is coming in very handy.

We had a guided tour of the Windsor Mansion but I did not have my camera so all I got is the outside grounds. The tour was very interesting, given by a native American, Piute I believe, a very gentle, kind man. You could hear the sorrow in his voice as to his people having lost so much of their land and themselves. The guide told us the name of the white flowers I had seen earlier but I forget what he called them. He did say they were considered “poisonous” by the white man but “medicine” by the Indians. It seems it is an hallucinogenic and cost many a young Indian his life in the 60s.

Here are shots of the grounds...

and a few from inside the museum.

We passed the Tribal Headquarters of the Kaibab Piute Indians.

The sky looked rather cloudy but cleared up after a while. We stopped by Jacob Lake, just before the Grand Canyon. They have cottages, a café, gift shop, etc. there.

The mountain road before the park consists of miles after miles of meadow. The meadows are home to buffalo, antelope, deer, etc.

We had to stop and wait while a herd of buffalo crossed the road. They took their grand old time about it. You could see the biggest male was definitely the boss. He was keeping the youngsters and other males in line. When the buffalo jumped the small ditch on the left to come across the road, they were very quick and agile for animals as large as they are. They can run 30 mph.

At the Grand Canyon visitor center, there was a relief map of the canyon. As you can see, the north rim of the canyon (the upper part) is quite winding and one cannot see as easily as at the south rim which is much more condusive for driving. Still we had some spectacular views.

We saw some small oak bushes with small leaves and acorns as well as some more “twisted” trees. A western gray squirrel let us take his picture.

There was a lodge for sitting and viewing the canyon with steps leading up to it, various look out points.

We stopped at Jacob’s Lake for hamburgers and headed home. On the way, we saw another type of flower. Tried once again to get the stunning sunset, the sun was actually red-orange.