Grand Canyon Sunset

How do I not include dozens of photos of a single sunset we watched at the Grand Canyon? It's so hard to choose! We took the shuttle bus out to a quiet spot called Yaki Point and watched the sun go down for about an hour. So these photos are from various times during that hour, some taken with my IPhone, some with Jim's camera....

Grand Canyon Bear-Sighting!

This rare, grey bear was seen very near our campsite at the Grand Canyon! It was the first and only bear we've seen on this trip. We DID have elk stroll right through our campsite just a few feet from where we were having dinner. Apparently the elk in Grand Canyon National Park have gotten so tame that they present a hazard to visitors, especially ones trying to take photos alongside them.  

This is the view from the South Rim of the top section of Bright Angel Trail, which descends all the way to the Canyon floor and the Colorado River. You can hike down or ride down by mule, but you need to leave before sunrise due both to the distance and the heat (20 degrees hotter at the base than at the rim) and you must reserve a spot for the night at Phantom Ranch over a year in advance. A ranger told us that some people just keep walking, thinking the river is not so far, then get to the bottom and are sent packing with some food, water and a flashlight because there is clearly no where for them to stay. The ranger said that if you look over the rim through the night you can sometimes see a little path of very slow-moving flashlights up the trail... 

The Rangers here are very knowledgeable and take their jobs seriously. Here a Ranger is swearing in a couple of Junior Rangers who have completed their program.  We went on a couple of hikes with Rangers, and to one night program to learn about the stars, which are soooooooo bright and visible by the gajillions above the Park. 

On our geology hike the Ranger pointed out lots of fossil evidence that the Rim of the Canyon (at 7,000' above sea level now) was once home to sea creatures. 

This little guy was the son of a Native American dancer who performed one day with others in a plaza. 

He wanted to dance with his mom and got all tangled up in the fringes of her shawl.  His grandfather had to haul him away so she could dance. He was pretty unhappy about that! Screamed bloody murder. 

The view down the many, many switchbacks of the trails leading to the bottom of the Canyon make you a bit dizzy when you look straight down.

Unfortunately we didn't have a single day of crystal-clear views across and into the Canyon, probably due to smoke from fires in California. Smoke or mist or clouds can settle in the Canyon and then stay for a while. But nonetheless it was spectacular.

 

We did a 4-hour hike one day partway down the South Kaibab Trail to this spot called Cedar Ridge. Some of the well-known places you stop, like Ooh-Ahh Point, are missing their signs because visitors have stolen them as souvenirs. Our Ranger guide told us that only 5% of the Grand Canyon's visitors take even a few steps down a trail beyond the Rim. Only 1% ever reach the bottom. And the average time spent at the Grand Canyon is only 3 and a half hours. Seems crazy to me! I'd come back in a heartbeat. We spent 3 days. We got in free because we're old. We paid only $9 a night for the camp site (because we're old - yay for being old, man!!!) and there are free shuttle buses, a laundry, a huge store and hot showers you can walk to from the campsite, and excellent, friendly Rangers. Elk walking in for dinner. How can you beat that????

Another view of Cedar Ridge with little tourists out there on the very end...

Another view of the Canyon. We took sooooooo many photos!!

Jim at Cedar Ridge

Me on the last switchback up from Cedar Ridge back to the South Kaibab Trailhead. We were the oldest people to do this hike, which was not so very long but awfully steep is spots - and it felt good to still be able to do stuff like this!

 More on the Grand Canyon later....

Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, AZ

For a couple of nights we camped in Oak Creek Canyon a few miles north of Sedona, AZ.  The canyon is beautiful and we had great weather - it was clear and about 10 degrees cooler up there than in town.  Neither Jim nor I had seen Sedona for 20 years or more. It has become a sprawling town packed with shops of all descriptions, from very high end to junky. The surrounding red rocks are breathtaking, but it is a bit off-putting to see all the touristy stuff and built-up areas.

This is a walkway in an old shopping complex that is tastefully done, but not of much interest (to me, anyway) except for its little gardens, fountains and lovely old twisted sycamore trees. 

Here is me on a hike through Oak Creek Canyon. You cross and recross the  creek about 13 times.  It's very pleasant because of the shade, breeze, birdsong and smell of pines.

The canyon walls are very high

We did a few short drives around the area, since it was too hot midday to do any serious walking or hiking in and around Sedona. One evening we drove up to the airport high on the mesa to have a drink and watch the sun go down.  The red sandstone rocks are spectacular all around Sedona when you can get away from the houses in the expanding suburbs.  

This photo was taken from the terrance outside the Sedona Chapel of the Holy Cross. As you can see, someone has built a HUGE monstrosity of a private house right below. This thing was vastly bigger than anything else nearby and even had a massive artificial pool with waterfalls on the property.  Pretty awful. 

One of the rocky outcrops south of Sedona. For a sense of scale, that's Jim walking toward it in the field.

I think this one is called Bell Rock, because of its shape.

Another view taken perched on rocks mid-stream in Oak Creek.

Lots of yellow wildflowers on our hike into the canyon

We left Sedona for a night camping near Flagstaff, and then drove on to the Grand Canyon - that's up next post!

Almost stranded in Canyon de Chelly :-)

We hired a Navajo guide named Ben Teller to drive us through the Canyon de Chelly and show us the sites on the canyon floor. You need a 4 wheel drive to visit by vehicle and you can't visit the base of the canyon without a Navajo guide. For good reason as we learned later in the day. Ben is about 75 and has lived in the canyon his whole life (except as a kid when he went to boarding school, as happens here with all kids who live too far from a school to attend as day students). Anyway, it was interesting to hear his version of stories and history passed down through his family, and to see the canyon from his perspective.

Here is Jim taking a photo - gives you an idea of the enormity of the canyon rock faces and how green the vegetation is this year due to the constant rains through this spring and summer. 

You drive (or ride horseback or hike, depending on what type of visit you want to make with your guide) mostly on the river bed since the pastures and other tree-covered areas are privately owned by Navajo and are fenced off. This is what the riverbed looked like when we started out. Kind of muddy, but not too bad. 

This is Antelope House, a ruin near Ben's little house where he an his kids sell jewelry and stuff to any tourists visiting the area. The history of Antelope house is too complex to tell here, but below are some pictographs on the walls nearby 

Here is a zig-zaggy snake, human figures and hand prints and other abstract symbols

Here are antelope and other symbols like a halo around the sun

More animals, human figures ad a rainbow

This is Coyote rock - can you see the coyote howling at the top?

Then it got really interesting as we made our way back. Water had begun to run pretty strongly from further up the canyon and had begun to wash out the places we needed to navigate to return. At one point, Ben, Jim and Ben's grandson who came along behind us in another vehicle and fortunately had two more shovels, had to cut a new path alongside the riverbed and fill in the deep muddy holes. 

Here is the place they made less muddy and we made it through. The vehicle itself is pretty beat up, but these rutted and twisting paths must be hard on the car and make for an interesting ride. Some people call these guides tours by Jeep "Shake and Bake" tours. Hot and bumpy! And this year, there are mosquitoes due to the wet conditions and standing water.  Sort of unusual for us since we haven't been bothered by bugs at all on this whole trip, with the exception of a few flies at Bandelier. 

Here you can see the water beginning to be a problem in the track we had to follow.

Soon we were crossing and recrossing shallow rivers like this, at which the edges gets steeper and steeper each time water flows down the canyon and follows a narrower and narrower path. The water picks up speed and each time erodes the bed further rather than spreading out on a flatter canyon floor. Although the National Park Service is supposed to maintain the canyon, it seems they lack the time, resources or inclination to help really make this place safer for visitors and the Navajo themselves. A couple of weeks ago a disabled local girl died in a flood when the vehicle carrying her dropped into a sinkhole. We saw the area taped off. Apparently from time to time the Park Service closes the canyon to traffic, but that's about it.   

On a brighter note, this last photo shows some kids on horseback - looks like fun! Except maybe for the mosquitoes!

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. If you REALLY like red rocks.

This is NOT Canyon de Chelly - it's Shiprock, which we passed by on our way from Bandolier to Canyon de Chelly.  Shiprock is a monstrous rock emerging from the earth in the far northwest corner of New Mexico.  For the Navajo it's a sacred place. For Anglos, it apparently looked like an ocean-going ship - hence the name. 

The route we took to get to Canyon de Chelly avoided the main highways and wound through some beautiful country, over mountain ranges and through red rocks like these.  It was a gorgeous day!  

When we got to Canyon de Chelly it was late afternoon, so we took a 16-mile drive along the South Rim of the 2-pronged canyon. We wanted to see the canyon from several overlooks as the sun set. The sandstone cliffs rise to over 1,000 feet above the floor in places, and the muddy-red Chinle Wash wanders along the green canyon floor - an oasis of cottonwoods, willows, roughly planted fields and small wandering herds of sheep and horses.  

This photo gives an idea of the height of the rim and the flatness of the land above the canyon. 

Due to the heavy and frequent rains this year, the canyon is very green at the base.   To get an idea of the immensity of these canyon walls, if you look closely you can see a tiny white house in the lower part of the photo just left of center. About 25 Navajo families still live in the canyon and farm it in the summer. The land has been passed down from mother to daughter, as is the Navajo custom.  

Some of the sandstone wears away in round or oval patterns that resemble huge stacked or strewn clamstones 

There had been rain earlier in the afternoon and there was a gorgeous rainbow, followed by this colorful sunset

And in the opposite direction, after the sun had set behind this tree, the sky was different, but equally beautiful.

That was last evening. Today we toured the canyon floor by vehicle with a Navajo guide who has lived in the canyon for over 70 years. You cannot visit the canyon floor without a guide. We had an interesting day, which I'll tell you about in the next post. 

Bandolier National Monument. Amazing.

When we were looking for day trips outside Santa Fe, we drove to nearby Bandolier National Monument. We enjoyed the day so much we decided to leave Santa Fe Hyde Memorial Campground (which was a bit noisy and required us to haul in our own water due to problems with their water system) and spend 3 days in Bandolier's Juniper Campground. $6 per day with a Senior Pass - can't beat that! And this well maintained, updated campground has a shuttle bus that takes you to the Visitor's Center and trails!  Plus we became friends with a Colorado couple in the next campsite and very much enjoyed their company while there.

The Ancestral Puebloans who first inhabited the Frijoles Canyon here scooped shelters out of the south-facing rock wall and built 2 and 3 story dwellings against the cliff wall floor, using mortised holes in the rock to hold horizontal poles to support roofs. 

Many of the cliff dwellings can be entered by ladder

This shows the remains of some of the dwellings built at ground-level against the cliff. "Long House" is an 800 foot stretch of such dwellings, including the windows and doors on previous upper floors and the regularly-spaced holes that held the roof beams. You can see these better below...

A closer photo of the cliff wall. The rooms behind the walls are usually tiny, but often interconnected.

Above the highest stories on the cliff wall are many petroglyphs and pictographs of human figures, animals and other abstract symbols. 

Me climbing a ladder

From the height of the cliff dwellings you get a good view of the remains of Tyuonyi (meaning Place of Agreement)  - a circular, originally multistory 400-room village structure that was probably used mostly for trade and storage. 

We did a lot of hiking and walking here, despite noon-day temperatures in the 90s.  Carried lots of water and sunscreen.  One night after sundown we did a guided night walk to the part of the canyon with cliff dwellings, which had been lit by torches and had someone playing drums up there.  It was a moonless and overcast night - very black. This park is normally wonderful for stargazing because of the lack of interfering lights from populated areas. 

One day we walked 5 miles (round-trip) to a waterfall which you can just barely see here in the center of the photo. It was a pretty deep and narrow part of the canyon, and the falls were quite loud, even from a distance. Water in the Frijoles Canyon is almost always present - important for the people who lived and settled here since the water supported the growth of trees, plants and animals used for food, medicine, building materials, clothing and other needs.  Right now construction is underway at the river bed to prevent future damage from floods. In 2011 and 2013, enormous volumes of water (like 1,000 times the normal volume per minute) carried tons of logs and other debris down the river.  Huge piles of this debris are still everywhere along the riverbed.