Tour of America - Day Twenty Four

Grand Canyon. Not what I expected, but mostly in a good way. First, I expected to be in the middle of the desert. Nope. We’re talking high country here - trees and scrub and spectacular sky.

Entrance to the Park.

Our first stop was the visitor’s center which was…well…modest considering this is one of the hottest tourist destinations in the country. There were some interesting displays, though…

Model depicting layers of the canyon.


Original boat used to explore Colorado River and Canyon circa 1910's.

Heading over to the Canyon by foot there was some construction going on, so we had to walk a temporary gravel path to get to the temporary main vista, which was partially blocked by trees. We had to venture off the paved path and a bit closer to the precipice than this Mama Bear was comfortable with, but we did manage to get a spectacular view.

No railing...straight down.

Overhanging rock.

Papa Bear soaks it all in.

Clouds and cliffs.

Cliff...straight down.

Enjoying the view.

More trees and clouds and spectacular blue sky...

cause you haven't seen enough of those yet.

I drove us back to camp, but before even getting out of the park we enjoyed a deluge…a short, localized storm that dumped buckets of rain and some pea-sized hail on us. Visibility dropped to a few feet in a matter of minutes. If there had been any shoulder at all I would have pulled over, but as there wasn’t, I had to simply creep along at a snail’s pace until the sky cleared a bit. In the meantime, Papa Bear decided to roll down the window to check out the hail…and promptly got pelted. A yelp, and up the window went, quick as a flash.

Back at camp we had a simple dinner and a short (again) swim, and a lovely sunset. Nope, not the sunset you’d typically expect looking west, but the setting sun illuminating the clouds to the east. Still spectacular!