Friday, September 24
We call Brett this morning to wish him a Happy Birthday, then head towards Springdale.
65 degrees this morning. We have breakfast and arrive in Springdale around 9 AM. It is a zoo! Of course the Visitor's Center lot is full and as we go through town every shuttle stop is packed with a dozen or more folks, and there are a lot of stops! This reenforces our thought to skip the Zion Canyon shuttle route and continue past it on the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. Even though masks are required on the shuttles, there's just too many people for us.
We check our height, 8'4", and width, 6'7", to be sure we will fit through the tunnels on this road. Quite a few people have the same thought, apparently, because the road is pretty busy, at least initially. But, wow! Around every corner is another great view!
These flowers were a surprise at one stop, and smelled wonderful too!
We stop a few places and walk a bit, taking in the amazing scenery. Just can't capture the vastness and beauty with a camera!
Two tunnels. This one, built in 1930, was just over a mile long. Larger vehicles (like the one waiting)had to pay for a permit and wait till they closed the tunnel and made it one-way so they would fit.
This is checkerboard mesa, near the end.
Next stop, Kanab. This is the largest town we have been in on this trip and we take advantage of it by finding a laundromat, and a nice place for lunch. The laundromat is clean and not very busy and with big machines it doesn't take long to do a few loads.
For lunch, we go to Wild Thyme Cafe. It is around 2:00, so not very busy. We are in a room with a couple from Brooklyn who are headed to Bryce and a couple from Missouri, heading for Zion. Great sandwiches - Beth has a bbq chicken one with bacon, while Greg has a hamburger topped with pastrami - an unusual combination which he says is great! Lots of smashed potatoes for sides, so we box the leftovers for a future breakfast. Tasty lemonade as well.
From here we take 89A south - next stop will be North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Some pastureland and cattle and one ranch raising bison.
We travel through a large area of recently burned forest. Green on one side of the road and burned on the other. We come to a gas station and stop since we aren't sure there will be much on the North Rim. $4.55 is a record! (Turns out to be $3.90 at the North Rim.)
And then areas with some burned trees, some survivors and small evergreens and aspen which are turning quite yellow.
As we get closer to the North Rim we see lots of young aspen which are a brilliant yellow and orange! The North Rim is over 200 miles (driving) from the South Rim, but only 20+ miles as the crow flies. We are at a much higher altitude here.
Here the fire was in 2006, we find out later from a ranger; so the aspen are in the 6-10' range in height. Aspen are a colony-type tree. One huge root ball can send runners that create an entire grove of trees. Since the root ball does not burn, aspen are much quicker to come back after a fire. Evergreens take much longer.
The Visitor's Parking Lot is large and quite full. If this is the lesser visited side of the Grand Canyon, the south side must be overwhelmed!
We get a map and talk with a ranger named Steve who has a few suggestions of areas to see. We head to the campground first and find, not surprisingly, that it is filled. There are quite a few cabins in the area too, which are filled. The man at the campground asks if we ever do dispersed camping and gives us a rough map of the Kaibib National Forest and suggests a road with several sites. We have to drive back out of the Grand Canyon park and up a dirt road, but find a nice spot in the forest to spend the night. Right next to some yellow aspen, with no one else in sight. Much nicer than a crowded campground!
We relax and have dinner and walk a bit in the area. No trash, which unfortunately isn't always the case when boondocking, and Greg finds a few more neat rocks! Can't remember what dinner was - something fantastic, I'm sure :) We plan to get to Cape Royal Road early tomorrow - maybe for sunrise.
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