Monday, Day 9, May 21, 2012

Greetings from the Grand Canyon. Sleep in a little this morning. Up to late doing the blog and having trouble loading the photographs. After breakfast found the Wall Mart and got a few things I needed. Gassed Lady Blue and found a car wash to get some of the bugs off her. She must like these high altitudes as mileage has consistently been above 40 miles per gallon. The highest average on the last tank was 49.1 as measured by the car.

Mountains behind motel in Flagstaff





It is 76 miles from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon. The drive to the Canyon is through beautiful Ponderosa Pines and later a lot of scrub pines. The altitude is 8,000 plus. You can tell they have had fairly recent fires ( last year or so ) as the trunks are black up several feet. Arrived at the park and checked out the visitors center and a few other things and decided to go check on the availability of a room. The park is extremely busy now with tour buses and kids out of school. The clerk said there was one room left and was signing me up for it when it disappeared from the screen and now showed not available. There were 3 clerks checking  people in and another clerk sold the room I was to get. All room in the park were full. I came back out of the park a short distance and got the last room available at a Holiday Inn Express. So I will stay here for a couple of nights.

I strolled over to one of the main viewing point and sure enough the canyon is still here as big and glorious as ever. I drove about 20 some miles to the dessert view area. There are many viewing areas along this road ( route 64 ) and I will show you some selected ones. From the desert view this is the Eastern end of the canyon. It is still deep and impressive but off in the distance you can see that it is emerging from the mountains. From all these viewing areas you can see the Colorado river and from these distances and the fact it is way over a thousand feet below you you can see some of the rapids. One of the famous photos you often see is the " Watch Tower " which was designed by some famous person. While I was there a Park Ranger was giving a presentation. He was sitting on a big rock outside with a lot of people around him. There was some small tumble weed and another flowing bush and I think he was describing some of the plant life. I came walking by just as he told his audience to back up because there were 2 small rattle snakes crawling around under one of the rocks right where he was making his presentation. Well you know how people are they began to crowd around wanting to see the snakes and take a picture of them. I suspect the poor snakes were scared to death and could not escape because of all the people. I had no interest in this viewing as I had bigger fish to fry. I have been searching for a new straw hat for several days and could not find one small enough for my small head. The one I have been wearing was coming apart. Finally found one. Mr. Sun can not get at my ears, forehead or neck now. It has a tie down that goes under the chin and that came in useful later as the wind was really strong. The lady where I bought the hat told me the best place to watch a sunset at least as far as she was concerned. I rely on her since she is local and knows the area.  So I took off looking for Lipan Point which she recommended. Since sunset was 3 hours away I drove back to the main Grand Canyon Village to eat supper. Had some really good roast beef ( 2 large pieces ), mashed potatoes and corn. Drove back to Lipan Point and waited an hour for sunset. The canyon is now real smoky and looks like fog but you can smell the smoke. It has been in the high 80s all day but is now starting to cool off and I am putting on one of my warm shirts. Today I noticed that everyone of the viewing area has its own crow. Pretty tame and looking for a handout and scraps. Saw 2 deers today as I was looking for Lipan Point. As sunset approached a lot of people started showing up dressed for 80 degree weather and it was fast approaching low 70s with the wind howling. As the sun started to go down there was a beautiful sunset. I turned out to be sunset camera coach. There were two couples who were just taking one photograph after the other and I could hear them talking about the sunset was not showing up because of the smoke. So I took my camera over and showed them the last picture I took. I had watched them and both husbands and wives were pointing direct at the sun. I was aiming my camera high so the sun and clouds were at the bottom of the screen. They both tried this and said they got excellent photographs and thanked me as they left. One lady said she had taken over 200 shots before she got the good ones. That is the beauty of digital cameras you can immediately delete what you don't want. I hope to get some sun rise photographs the next day or so.

Ponderosa Pines

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon on a Smoky Day

Colorado River Rapids

Beautiful Grand Canyon

Blooming Sage Brush

I Got Him Before He Got Me

Watch Tower

What Are They Watching?

Grand Canyon Sun Set

Grand Canyon Sun Set

Good night folks. Lord willing same time and same station. Love you all. Grandpa Bill.