Days 15 and 16: the Grand Canyon, Arizona

The road to the Grand Canyon

We left Mesa Verde bright and early to make it all the way across the Arizona desert to the Grand Canyon in one day.  Of course we had to stop at the Four Corners monument, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah all share a common border.  Four Corners was pretty cool…it actually lies in Navajo territory so in addition to the border we also got to see a Navajo crafts market and try some “Navajo FryBread” which was strikingly similar to regular old fried dough.  It was definitely an interesting break in our long drive through the desert.

The Colorado River

Self-Explanatory

After the Four Corners we made our way strait to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, driving through some incredible and diverse landscapes along the way.  Unfortunately, we got to the Grand Canyon as it was getting dark so we didn’t have time to explore at all once we were done setting up camp.

 

The next morning, however, we decided to embark on a day’s journey along the rim, following the longest hiking trail that the north rim had to offer.  Our 10 mile roundtrip hike took us up a mountain side, across the rim of the canyon, into a forested valley, then up to and across a plateau which brought us to Widforss Point, from which we had an amazing view and could see into the distance for 75 miles. 

View from Widforss Point

While on the point we saw rain, thunder and lightning off in the distance, which at first was very impressive, but after some thought we realized we had to go 5 miles back to the car and had absolutely no desire to get caught in a thunder storm on the rim of the Grand Canyon.  Although we got rained on a little bit, we booked it back to the car in time to avoid any lightning, making the 5 mile return journey in an hour and forty minutes.  We got back to camp exhausted, and decided to plan out or next day at the canyon when we ran into some unexpected difficulties.

We stopped here to get everything we needed for our 800 mile drive

The next day we were planning on hiking into the canyon itself on a serious hike that had a total elevation change of more than 6,000 ft.  Unfortunately, the forecast called for rain, which meant that it would have been seriously dangerous to go on our planned hike that day.  Scrambling, we figured that we would just leave the Grand Canyon a day early and head to Bryce Canyon, then Zion Canyon, the next two stops on our itinerary.  Even more unfortunately, the forecast in both Bryce and Zion ALSO called for rain, so we were in a bad way.  After thinking for a few minutes over a few drinks we came up with a few ideas: we would leave the Grand Canyon the following morning, bypass Bryce and Zion, and make our way 800 miles northwest to San Francisco.  Not only would this get us out of the rain, but it would allow us to stop at the Redwood National Forest and Yosemite National Park, both of which we really wanted to check out.  So we woke up bright and early the next morning, packed our gear, and drove 800 miles through Utah, Las Vegas, Barstow and Bakersfield, all the way to San Francisco and the Pacific coast.