The North Rim

From our campground in Kanab, UT, the North Rim Visitor Center is 82 miles away, so we got an early start.  The North Rim is less visited overall, but we still wanted to be in and out before the crowds descended, and we succeeded.  It is estimated that only 10% of the 6 million visitors a year to the Grand Canyon visit the North Rim, it is 10 miles distant as the crow flies, but a rim to rim hike is about 21-24 miles, and to drive it is 210 miles!  It is also 1000' higher on the North Rim and much cooler, and mostly wooded.  Not as many viewpoints, but it is still spectacular, and we much prefer the North over the South, although you should make an effort to see both.  

We pulled in to the visitor center parking lot and there is no view of the canyon, in fact it is funny, at that point you don't even know it's there.  Oh, but it is, after a short walk.

The visitor center perched on the rim

Jan and Tom took a hike out the Bright Angel Trail, Karen and I stayed back, we don't do heights very well:-)

The narrow trail

Tom strolling along

The view was worth it for them, this picture is fine for me

We then drove out to the Angel's Window viewpoint, another 23 miles of very windy pretty road.  We set up a picnic on the rim with not too bad a view:-)

Jan near our picnic spot

Jan and I standing right at the "altar" at the wedding venue they have there

Angel's Window, and yes those are people on top, again Tom and Jan decided
to walk out there

The path to the point

Jan out on the end

Tom checking how far down, down is

Then we worked our way back to Point Imperial, the highest point on the North Rim at 8803'.

See the bend in the Colorado River middle right?

A closer view, the Anazazi lived down here in the winter.
Then in the summer they would hike up to the rim to plant and live.
It was a 2 1/2 day hike to the rim from there along a stream

After the Grand Canyon we left for Page, AZ, and the Wahweap Campground beside the Wahweap Bay on Lake Powell.  

Interesting terrain along the way

The view right below the campground

A view of the marina

All reports and pictures of this campground show a beautiful, all paved, terraced top tier park.  And that turned out to be partly true, there were quite a few sites that were extraordinary, huge with patios, etc, but most were not, and there is no way to pick out a particular site, so you get what you get.  We even made a reservation for two sites so we could be together and even that didn't work out, in fact we were so far apart we had to drive to happy hour!  We were shoehorned into a shared site with another 45' coach with a trailer.  Nice place, we won't go back unless you could pick your site.  Oh yeah, and did I mention it was expensive too.

Our shared site

So bye bye, off to Durango for a couple weeks.

A cool view of the lake right above the dam

So after a few hundred miles we left the desert, said goodbye, and welcomed the mountains and green.

Into and Out of Arizona

It certainly was made apparent that our choice of Arizona in mid to late May wasn't very well thought out.  Way too hot and way, way too windy!  But we did have a good time nonetheless.  We continued north from the Salt River Canyon to Homolovi State Park.  It was a great campground, all paved, very dark and quiet not far from Winslow, AZ.  Since we changed our minds and decided to go there at the last minute we could only get 30 amp sites, but we lucked out with the weather and didn't need AC.  We split up the next day and Karen and Tom went to the Meteor Crater, and Jan and I walked around the ruins in the state park.  There are several Anazazi ruins in the park.

The view from our site

There has been a change in outlook as to ruins, of course, way, way back people just came and ransacked them looking for souvenirs, pottery, tools, etc.  Then when they became protected there was a move to rebuild them and present them to people as they used to be so you could envision life in these villages; some of the ruins, i.e. Mesa Verde and Bandelier come to mind, little rebuilding had to take place as the buildings were protected and covered by rock roofs or in caves.  But more and more the prevailing opinion is to leave the ruins alone, and unfortunately it is very hard to discern what you are actually looking at other than mounds of rocks and earth.  This park was more of the latter, most were left as is.  One thing we were amazed by was the absolute plethora of pottery shards, they were everywhere!  Jan and I have visited many ruins and have never seen any items laying around the sites.  It seems that people have picked many of them up and laid them on flat rocks to showcase them.

They did reconstruct one kiva, without its roof, and a part of a building to show the rooms, but the rest is left alone.  They believe there were 1200-2000 rooms in this area up to 3 stories high.

Reconstruction to give an idea of the rooms

This is what most of the site looked like, use your imagination

A kiva

A blurry shot of Humphrey's Peak, highest point in AZ off in the distance, about 70 miles

Then we had to go downtown to see the "Take It Easy" corner.  I'm sure you all are familiar with the Eagle song, "Well I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and such a fine sight to see, it's a girl, my Lord in a flatbed Ford, slowin down to take a look at me".

And the Ford.

It was cute and cool.  Then Karen and Tom mentioned they had been to Winslow before and had eaten dinner in the famous La Posada hotel, and would like to do that again.  The La Posada was built in 1920 to be the finest hotel in the SW.  Designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter and cost over 1 million dollars, with grounds over 2 million, approximately 40 million dollars today.  It opened in 1930 and closed down in 1957, and fell into disrepair and was almost demolished several times.  Allan Affeldt restored it in 1997 for approximately $12 million, and brought it back to its original splendor.  The dining room is called The Turquoise Room where we four had dinner, it was excellent, service was fantastic and the food delicious, yes food pictures:-)

Stuffed squash blossoms

Calamari

Elk medallions

Bison short ribs, the 2 women had this

And the "Wild", quail, elk, and bison and venison chili

It was fascinating walking around the hotel and grounds, so glad we came, thanks, Karen and Tom!

After enjoying the sunset it was time to leave in the morning to go to Williams, AZ, a jumping off place for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

It was a short stay in Williams, Karen and Tom headed for the South Rim, we had been many times, so we stayed back and had a mediocre lunch in a touristy town, and called it a day, and the next day off we went to Kanab, UT.  We got an early start for our 240 mile day, and almost immediately had a glitch, we stopped to get fuel at a truck stop in Flagstaff, we hit the pump first, but it wouldn't work, the pumps were all backed up 3-4 deep, inside there was only one person working with a line of at least 10 people, so we bailed out and saw there was no way we could get back in line, no room, so we opted to drive back the way we came 12 miles to another truck stop.  Karen lucked out and had no problem with her pump so they waited for us to catch up.  Then as we proceeded north the wind blew, man o man did it blow!  25-35, gusting to 50mph, 90 degrees to our drive, even with these big heavy rigs it was a workout, and as the road got narrower we got slower, then add in the dust storms, so to say it was a long day is an understatement. 

Humphrey's Peak obscured by clouds as we headed towards Flagstaff

You can start to see the dust

 

We crossed the Historic Navajo Bridge over the Colorado, 470' high

The scenery was great, but the wind was brutal and we just couldn't shake the dust.

But we finally made it to a very nice campground, called Dark Sky to the east of Kanab, UT.  It was well laid out, completely dark at night, very quiet, very nice.

They even had a small zip line for the kids

The kid's area

The adult area

Our site

K&T's rig in front of us

On our first day there we took a loop ride over and through the bottom of Zion National Park, you can no longer drive into the heart of the park, you have to take a shuttle, but we did get a good feel for it.  Man, was it busy!  I think these people have been chomping at the bit with staying home with the pandemic and now that essentially all the restrictions are over, they are bursting forth!

Getting ready to go after our picnic lunch, yeah here, we couldn't find anywhere else

All in all a good day, the next day we planned to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, post to follow.