It was a really fun day on so many levels. We took our time before heading out at 10 to drive the east rim of the Canyon to Desert View and the east entrance of the park. Right at the start, we saw female elk grazing along the road in the woods. What a great start.
We stopped at all of the lookouts along the way, and each view of the Canyon was different and awesome. There is no way to comprehend the immenseness of the Canyon, even when standing on its edge. I have lots of photos, but none of them totally captures the experience.
The wildflowers were amazing. In addition to the purple hoary asters and the yellow rabbitbush, I saw orange globe mallow, scarlet hedge-nettle, and many I haven’t identified yet.
We stopped for a picnic at Buggeln Picnic area. We ate our sandwiches without a view, but as soon as we were done, a huge raven came to the table looking for scraps. The raven that are in this area are huge.
After many lookouts, we stopped at the Tusayan Ruins and museum. This is the remains of an 800+ year old native American village. The museum was quite interesting, and I saw strange twig animal figures in a glass case. When I asked the ranger about it, she told me these are split-twig willow figurines 2000-4000 years old and were found in caves around the Canyon which helped to preserve them. They had some silver jewelry in the shape of the figures, but the ranger gave me something even better. When they have school groups at the ruins, they make the figurines out of really long brown twist ties. She gave me a set of instructions and 3 of the ties. What fun! The museum and ruins were really quite well done for a small site. I also saw my first desert prickly pear cactus with fruit on it.
We ended up at Desert View and the east entrance to the park. The Watchtower here is the main attraction. Mary Colter designed this tower which was finished in 1932. It is 70’ high, has 82 steps to the top from which one has an amazing view of the Canyon, Cedar Mountain (absolutely beautiful mountain on the plains), and the Colorado River. The interior has lots of murals and paintings by Fred Kabotie and Fred Geary.
On the way back, we stopped at a couple of lookouts we had missed, and we could actually see the Colorado River really well with rapids, boaters, and kayakers with the binoculars and my camera.
I wore my Mt St Helens T-shirt today, and lots of people started conversations about it. I was really surprised at that. Talked to a couple of guys from Pensacola who had picked up a car in WA and were driving it back to FL. At another viewpoint, I talked to a group from Paris. People were so friendly today.
As we were close to Grand Canyon Village, we saw an animal jam….cars parked along the road, so Bill pulled over, and I walked across the road to find a herd of female elk grazing in the woods. It was a neat way to end the drive, just like we started it.
Bill went through mail at the picnic table, and I worked on the blog. He came in to get me because there was a beautiful male mule deer with large antlers at the end of our row. He was eating grass and drinking water from a camping site. I got lots of great photos. He left and a large female elk came to drink from the same spot. It was great to see wildlife in our campground.
It was just an amazing day! Today's photo is one of my more artsy endeavors. I liked the tree, the outcropping, all against the Canyon.
No comments:
Post a Comment