So the day before we got to the Grand Canyon, the third person in a month fell to their death. I have to say that at no point in time have I thought to myself, Wow, dying on my vacation would be the best thing ever. The thing is, all of them were preventable. Stay on the damn path. No photo on the edge is worth dying for. Don’t get me wrong, the Canyon is damn beautiful, but scary as hell.
We left Tuba City early, because we wanted to avoid the Spring Break crowds as much as possible. We didn’t realize that there was a time change in there. Navajo Nation ignores Arizona time. So it was an hour earlier when we got to the Canyon.
That didn’t hurt us in the long run.
6 AM on the rim.
Our dads would be so proud of us for getting up so damn early for a National Park.
The park needs maintenance. I’m not a fan of graffiti, but this isn’t a bad plan.
We drove the east rim and stopped at all the viewpoints. Not a lot of people. Saw these deer.
We love deer.
We picked up a shuttle in town and planned to hit the west side of the rim…and there were the elk. Right in the village.
Hi guys.
Haven’t seen that flower before.
The canyon was pretty chilly, in the 30s, when we started, but it warmed up.
We did a little bit of the Rim Trail.
We weren’t really prepared for more of it.
The sun is coming up. It’s still early.
Whatever I thought I remembered from my childhood and early adulthood, it doesn’t match up to seeing it again.
HOLY SHIT THAT’S DEEP.
And huge
Sorta mind-boggling.
And intensely beautiful.
It was definitely worth the day trip, and we’ll need to go back.
I’m willing to hike in, but something has to bring me back out. And not in summer. Too hot.
We saw this little girl multiple times on the shuttle. As we drove past amazing vistas, she had her nose in a book. I know that kid. Seriously. I was that kid. And she’s reading one of the Warriors series.
Just like my kids did. Dad kept trying to get her to look out the window. She’d look up, peer around, and then go back to the book.
So we get back to the visitor center around lunch time. We’re looking for bathrooms, a T-shirt, etc. Little kids running around and screaming, people everywhere. And we’d had this continuing conversation about turkey vultures or condors. We saw a condor in Zion, and then I look up, and amidst all the noise and people, there’s two of them (no I never got them in a photo together). You can see their tags. They’re condors. In the wild.
Shitty picture, I know. But I stood there and tears came to my eyes because that’s what we’re working toward. Despite stupid people and the government trying to drill for oil in National Monuments and other stupid crap because we need to keep our huge SUVs and you can’t take away my plastic water bottle. There it is. A pair of fucking condors in the wild.
Yeah. That was cool. No one but us looking up.
So we ate lunch and decided to leave the rest of the Grand Canyon experience for another trip. I think we’d like to camp and maybe hike the rest of the rim and who knows what else. As we’re leaving, we’re noticing these huge piles of dead wood and branches in the forest on both sides of the road.
You can see a couple of them in this picture. They’re everywhere. Miles of them. Because Arizona apparently raked the woods. You’ll only get that if you’re from California, maybe, after Trump blamed our most recent horrific fires on not raking the woods.
Yesterday, I went to quilt class, and then came home and finished cutting all these out.
I did it while editing a long science lab video for my students. Lots of wait time while video portions saved. So I cut and waited. Tonight, I’ll sort and start ironing. Hopefully. I’m really tired, so we’ll see how that goes.
Kathy Nida 