Southwestern road trip: Grand Canyon

  OK, I’m back and ready to talk some Grand Canyon. My wife and I had been once before, coming up to the more common southern entrance through Tusayan. This time, however, we came in through the so-called “Desert View” entrance. On that route, before you get to the National Park you get some really stunning views of Marble Canyon, which is pretty impressive all on its own. However, because Marble Canyon is on a Navajo rez, the turquoise jewelry vendors have been allowed to completely take over the “scenic overlooks” — which of course are not scenic at all anymore, unless you like a closeup view of corrugated tin shacks (I do not). It’s a real shame, because Marble Canyon is lovely.

It’s a cliche to say good things about the Grand Canyon, but I would only add that one of the things that makes it such a cool experience is the way it’s managed. There’s a real respect not only for the park’s natural history but for its human history as well, which goes back 100 years to the very beginning of what we know as tourism in this country.

The old lodges are lovingly maintained with a minimum of modernization. Yes, the restaurants are overpriced but at least offer tasty food, not dreck (I have to think that the large numbers of international travelers, used to much better food than Americans are, have something to with the good food quality at the Grand Canyon). Because of this commitment to quality over Disneyfication, it’s much easier to coexist with the massive volume of people, speaking dozens of languages, who are always, always at the park at all times of year.

Here’s the first pic we took, of my daughters’ very first chance to see the Canyon:


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I have no pics of the coolest thing we did at the Canyon, because it happened at night. An amateur astronomer’s society held a special event in a couple of parking lots whereby the public could, for free, come and have a look through their telescopes at any number of amazing things visible in this totally clear, star-filled night sky. And when I say “amateur” I mean more in the classic sense of doing what they do out of love. Because their super-duper highpower telescopes with automatic tracking cannot have been cheap.

We saw star clusters, double stars, triple stars, nebulae, supernovae, the works. And with the naked eye, more satellites, a la my previous post on Canyon de Chelly.

Here’s a classic Canyon daytime vista, on a day with very little of the haze that sometimes makes daytime viewing difficult. Note the trail on the plateau at lower left center:


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Because I nearly killed myself from heat exhaustion overdoing it on the Canyon de Chelly White House trail, we were perhaps overly cautious at the Grand Canyon. We hiked down a little ways but really nothing compared to the huge distances you can take on if you’re hardy enough or dumb enough. Here’s me and the girls on our little hike down, a particularly nice shot:


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