Blogs from Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, United States, North America - page 17

#16 Grand Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, French Neighbors and The Four Corners Sunday Sept 5-Mon. Sept 6: Every evening I mark an orange line on our atlas with the route we've taken, and I re-estimate our forward journey for time and possible sites. It had seemed best to leave visiting the Grand Canyon to the South Rim on our return trip, but today we decided to pop in to the North Rim for a quick “sticky beak”. The sheer magnitude of the Grand Canyon would make anyone gasp, including us of course. Then I saw the Grand Canyon Lodge, perched right on the edge, with a magnificent view from its sun porch and I quickly imagined that it would be a great place to wake up on the morning of our 36th wedding anniversary (½ of Phil's ... read more

GC NR - Day 3 This mornings bike ride was shorter and sought out level roadways. This was also laundry and shower morning. We found the showers unique in that the shower heads were high pressure nozzles with no adjustment. The first shot felt like the top layer of skin was being peeled off, but as the screams fell on deaf ears, I realized the timer was running With clean bodies, we drove to Cape Royal. All of the roads in the park were under repair and this road was closed for the last day or so. The 20+ mile drive on a narrow roadway with several view points was a throwback drive with trees hanging over a roadway with no shoulders. Cape Royal did not disappoint. It was less hazy today and the big muddy ... read more

Kingman - 7h du matin - 35 degré Celsius.... Il est temps de mettre les voiles dans la voiture climatisé.... (Comment on faisait avant l'invention de l'AC?). Direction Grand Canyon National Park à quelques heures de voitures. Les paysages sont désertiques et les couleurs des roches tendent vers le rouge. Voici les paysages si symboliques de l'Ouest américain. On arrivera par une route bordée d'arbres loin de l'image que nous nous faisions de l'approche des failles du grand canyon. La météo prévoit des journées alternant soleil, nuage et pluie... Finalement un bon cocktail pour nous permettre en plein milieu de l'été de faire des randonnées dans les gorges du Canyon. Nous avons eu la chance de faire 3 randos : la classique "Rim Trail" qui alterne les points de vue en haut du canyon, le début ... read more

We got to the National Forest Campground (Ten X) just 4 miles south of the Grand Canyon Nat'l Park late on Thursday afternoon. We had read that it rarely fills up, and there were a few spots left. We made camp, but as we were in the forest, no internet or tv...we were "roughing" it!! We did a lot of reading the evenings we stayed there, and found a DVD we hadn't watched yet :) We got up Friday morning and headed for the canyon. I took one picture and the camera battery went dead, so we headed to the Park HQ and asked if we could charge it for a bit. They have the only wifi in the area there, so we got coffee and surfed waiting for the battery to charge. Then we were ... read more

July 23, 2010 Yesterday was the hairiest day of my trip. I made several consecutive bad decisions that led to a minor freak out. Of course, I had no way of knowing what was going to happen, but I probably should have just planned it a wee bit better. Bad decision #1—sleeping in until 11am, and not leaving Vegas until around 1pm. Bad decision #2- cancelling my camp reservations at the Grand Canyon Bad decision #3- still deciding to go the North Rim of the Grand Canyon Bad decision #4- not calculating my route to the North Rim prior to departure. Bad decision #5- still insisting we can make the Grand Canyon prior to dark. So all of these bad decisions were added to a bunch of unforeseen circumstances that I probably should have forseen given ... read more