The Grand Canyon

where we take in the wonders of the Canyon and get to do some more camping

We’d just spent a night in Las Vegas and next up was the Grand Canyon for a couple of nights camping.

The roads were fairly quiet as we drove away from the motel (probably aren’t too many morning people in Las Vegas) and it was easy to make our way out onto highway 93. Though we were pressed for time – hoping to get to the campground early to nab a walk up spot – we wanted to take in the Hoover Dam while we were so close. It’s not far outside Vegas, just past Boulder City and on the Colorado river. The dam itself has been bypassed since 2010 so a detour down to it from the highway is needed. The detour didn’t take long and after passing through a pretty relaxed security checkpoint and some winding bends we had the dam right in front of us. We managed to get some good photos (we found the places with signs that read “Do not stop here” we’re the best places to stop for quick photos – it was a quiet morning) and just about managed to resist the urge to take the hours long tour. All in all, it was a very impressive sight and worth making time for.

The rest of the four and a half hour drive was pretty uneventful aside from some pretty spectacular fork lightning storms ahead of us as we neared the canyon. It seemed as if we were heading straight into a bad storm and that didn’t bode well for our planned nights of camping (a tent in a lightning storm, good idea?). Luckily, it seemed to clear up as we got closer.

Having not stopped off properly along the way, we pulled in for a coffee at McDonalds just outside the park in the town of Tusayan. We were hoping to use the wifi to book our nights after the Grand Canyon. The place was packed with bus loads of tourists who seemed to have had the same idea as us. We ended up not spending too long there or getting anything booked, fearing that our walk up spot was in jeopardy if we left it any longer and if there were similar crowds inside the park.

We had hoped to get a walk up spot at one of the less well serviced campgrounds in the park, the Desert View campground. We figured that less service (i.e. no showers) and its distance from the main park entrance (40 km) would mean that it would be in less demand. We seriously began to doubt that train of thought when we came on the massive line of stationary cars, all trying to get into the park. And it was still before 11 in the morning. Things weren’t looking good.

15 minutes later and we reached the little pay hut at the top of the line and its park ranger. It was $30 for a seven day pass for us and the car. And where an available camp site was concerned….no such luck. Every campground was confirmed as full up. Instead, the extremely helpful ranger directed to a private park campground just a mile outside the park entrance called Campers Village. Realising this was our best chance of camping for the night, we swung the car around in a u-turn and headed straight there. The Grand Canyon would have to wait an hour or two.

We found Campers Village as promised, one mile back the road, and headed to the reception building to check if we were in luck. It seemed we were. Despite the huge number of parked RVs we passed on the way to the building, there were plenty of free tent campsites in a quiet corner of the campground. It was $20 per campsite, which was a big saving on our only other alternative of getting a hotel room, and oddly for a campsite, that even included wifi access. With our air mattress and now wifi….it was getting harder and harder to claim we were roughing it on these camping nights. The lady behind the desk promised a nice spot with a shared fire ring but pointed out the site along side was unoccupied.

We went and scoped out our campsite. It did indeed have a shared fire ring and the site beside us was indeed empty. It was a good spot. Happy days. We pitched the tent in double quick time and headed back to the park to explore.

After another 15 minutes of waiting at the gate, we were waved on when they saw our permit. There’s no fast track for paid up folk. Hoping to get the most out of our day, we went straight to the visitor centre not that far inside the park entrance. We figured it would give us a good idea of how best to approach our visit. We ended up watching a short film in the centre’s small theatre. It was about the park and gave a great overview of the history, the native people and what was happening in the park now. Without mentioning any names…. one of us fell asleep for the final 20 minutes of the film… The last few days of long drives, early mornings and late nights finally catching up.

After the film/snooze and after checking out almost everything else that the centre had to offer we drove on further into the park. We hadn’t seen it before this point with all our camping efforts and visitor centre exploring. The trees on the side of the road cleared and we came up on a viewing point with a few cars parked up and people out taking photos. The canyon came into view just as we were pulling in off the road. That first glimpse of it was breathtaking. We parked up and got out for a proper look. We were standing on the southern rim of the canyon and the sheer scale and vastness of the what we saw in front of us was hard to take in. The mixture of colours was stunning. We walked along there for a little bit, amazed by the constantly changing view each new angle brought.

After we’d seen as much as we could take for the moment we got back in the car and continued the drive alongside the canyon. We headed for the Desert View end of the canyon (40 km) to check the campground out for the following day and to see what that end of the canyon was like. At the time, 40 km didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Writing this now, that sounds like a mammoth distance to go just to check out an area, especially considering that we planned to turn right around and drive another 40 km back. This is what happens when you drive huge distances around America!

The drive around was nice and we got to see some wildlife along the way just off the road, mostly elk. There were sporadic views of the canyon but mostly it was replaced by thick tree cover. If there was anywhere along the road worth stopping it was usually signalled by masses of cars already stopped and other cars slowing down to see what was of interest.

The campground itself was easy to find and lived up to its Desert View name. It was a bit back from the canyon itself and was dotted around with trees but was mostly short on greenery. It looked fine but was very full with every site taken, just as the signs at the park gate had warned. The campsites themselves were decently spread out but unlike some of the other places we’d stayed, there wasn’t any real cover between sites. We drove around, checking out what sites would be best. We checked out the pay system and we decided that if we arrived at the campground at about 9 in the morning we’d have our best chance of getting a spot. That meant a bit of an early start to pack up, eat and get over to the campground but that didn’t matter. As we were learning, you rise early when camping.

We checked out the Desert View Watch Tower not far from the campground. It’s a take on what the native First Nation people would have built, but not built by them. It has good views and has interesting designs inside.

We drove back to the main entrance, starting to appreciate again what 40 km of driving is. We stopped plenty of times along the way to gaze at the canyon. Then we ended up back outside the park to find some food. We ended up grabbing some questionable but passable pizza just outside the park, in bad need of a snack before the hunger overtook us.

The park certainly has a calming effect and apart from the hunger – which the pizza temporarily solved – we were feeling relaxed. Back at our campsite, we found that the place had really filled up since we had put up our tent. No longer was our neighbouring campsite empty, though judging by where they put up their tent, they hadn’t quiet realised that they had an ownership stake in the communal fire ring. We lit a fire, regretting the smoke that was billowing straight towards our new neighbours’ tent but what could we do.

We shared our fire lighter and some chat with some other neighbours – our nearest neighbours hadn’t emerged for a chat and one had even taken to their car to read a book, probably because of the smoke coming from the non-communal/communal fire ring but possibly because they just weren’t cut out for the camping life. We made some use of the wi-fi, though that required a walk back towards the reception building. The coverage at our site wasn’t quite what the lady promised, but that was ok by us. Wi-fi while camping seemed at odds with the point of it all. We took in some star gazing and then headed for an early night.

We woke up with the sun at 6 am. Even at that early hour, a surprising number of our neighbours had already cleared their sites and left with more in the middle of doing the same. We were starting to get used to this routine of rising with the sun but it was still a surprise to see so many others already signed up to it. We agreed we’d be out of the camp by 8:30 and after reheating the leftovers from last night, showering (oh the luxury of coin operated showers) and packing up the tent, we were on the way (we also managed to take advantage of the campsite’s wi-fi to FaceTime some family from home in the middle of all that).

After getting through the now familiar backlog at the park gate and driving the same 40km stretch we arrived at Desert View just after nine. We found some campers had decided to hang around for another night but there was also loads of vacated sites and we had our pick of some of the better ones. We pitched our tent, paid our $12 fee and watched on while the biggest raven you could imagine picked at some food which had been left out by neighbouring campers (the raven was the size of a chicken, with no exaggeration, there wasn’t a hope we were going to try and interrupt it’s meal).

These neighbours returned not long after and turned out to be nice guys. They were packing up and heading for Vegas, the opposite of the drive we had done the day before. They very kindly left us with 8 gallons of water which they were certain they wouldn’t need (had they seen the weather report from Las Vegas?!). We didn’t mention that we’d witnessed the raven’s raid on their supplies. Best not to.

Our food supplies were beginning to run low so pre-planning that night’s dinner already we went off to search out all the shops in the park to see what they had on offer. It turned out there were quite a few in the park and just outside and they were surprisingly well stocked and even more surprisingly reasonable enough in cost.

We ended up heading back to McDonalds again to steal some wi-fi in another attempt to book accommodation for the following days. After a grueling few weeks on the road with no real break we decided to pick a cheap motel not all that far from the park where we could lay our heads for a night without a huge day of driving beforehand. This turned out to be a Motel 6 in Holbrook.

Then on to do some more exploring of the canyon. One of the best ways of doing it is by descending down to the canyon floor, or some of the way down at least. There’s a couple of trails to do this on and the best, nearest one for us was the Bright Angel Trail. From the visitor centre beside Canyon Village we took the Blue Route free shuttle bus to the trail head. The trail was originally a route to the canyon floor used by early explorers and tourists who had the pleasure of descending on pack mules. Judging by the dung on the route down, mules still passed along this way.

We walked down for thirty minutes (which a ranger later told us was about 3/4 mile). Along the way we met and passed plenty of people. This included some very unfit people who were struggling slightly in the heat and with the steepness of the path. It just shows how easy it is to keep walking down and down without planning for the walk back up – there was no other way back up the canyon at this part of the park!

We decided to heed our own advice on this point and turn back before the climb up became too much of a pain. Despite one of us not being a huge fan of heights (remember, we were on a steep, narrow path cut high up on a canyon wall), we were fine coming back but you definitely feel the hill. We got nabbed at the top of the trail by park rangers doing a survey (this is how we found out how much/little we’d walked). We answered some questions on how much water we’d taken with us on the walk, not half enough as it turned out..

Also at the top of the trail, we visited the Kolb’s historic photo studio at the trail head. These guys were some of the early pioneers of the Grand Canyon and the first to film an entire boat ride through it the canyon. They set up a studio here and welcomed some of the first tourists to the area, photographing them as they travelled along on the back of mules. The film of the boat ride was played in that very studio for years after the event, complete with narration by one of the brothers. It was a pretty interesting and well kept piece of history.

We got the Blue Shuttle bus back to the car and went back to our camp for an early dinner. The ravens were still about but our site was still intact. We cooked the dinner on the Primus to avoid lighting a fire (a dinner of beans, soup and pasta might sound like a strange combination but it hit the spot nicely). The reason for not lighting the fire was because we had a date with a star show back at the visitor centre. So back we went after dinner.

 

Out in the carpark behind the centre we found a big group of star gazing enthusiasts standing around in the dark. When our eyes adjusted to the dark we could just about make out a big and varied collection of telescopes. An actual tour of the nights sky kicked off not long after. The Grand Canyon is an excellent place for this because there’s so little light pollution from the park or the surrounding areas. The tour was hosted by a pretty decent guide (albeit a bit grumpy, long winded and full of bad jokes but hey, this guy was a volunteer) with an incredibly powerful laser pointer and more importantly really great knowledge of the stars.

We learnt about the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and the North Star. They were really easy to see when they were marked out by the laser pointer. This pointer is the type that can’t be shone at airplanes for fear of blinding the pilot. There were a few planes in the sky that night but the pointer was kept well away from them as they traced paths through the night’s sky.

We also learnt that red light is ok for star gazing while white light is not and temporarily reduces how clearly you can the stars – the science on this is a bit long winded and probably not completely relevant to the dim, cheap lights we had that night. Some in our tour group were more passionate about this fact than others and when people approached with white light torches on to guide their way they received shouted orders to “SWITCH OFF YOUR LIGHT………PLEASE”, shouted a little too aggressively for the setting. When this happened for the third time and resulted in someone taking a tumble over a curb (we were standing in a pitch dark carpark with plenty of trip hazards, so not an unlikely thing to happen!), we decided we’d had enough and snuck off, fearing a mob mentality had taken over in our little band of star gazers. Apart from that, not a bad way to spend a night in the Grand Canyon.

As was becoming typical on our camping days, we woke up early the next morning after sleeping soundly. No fear of howling coyotes keeping us awake like we had camping in Joshua Tree. Breakfast consisted of coffee, flat bread, hummus and last nights leftovers. We were reluctant to leave. We’d slept so well and enjoyed our time in the park so much that we’d have happily stayed on another night but we’d booked our motel the previous day and aimed to be on the road by 9.

While some had packed up, our neighbours on one side who’d been so lively as we were going asleep, were still out around the campfire. The father, so chilled the evening before, was now on a very loud and stressful sounding phone call. After a half an hour of this he returned to his family at the campfire but now sat slumped in his camp chair. It was so strange seeing stressful day-to-day life impinging on the peaceful setting. It was food for thought for us as we considered what came next after we’d finished this trip.

We packed up and left the park through the nearest entrance, out along highway 64. This road turned out to be the roughest road we’d encountered on the trip so far and we didn’t get up much speed as we made our way along. The route brought us through the Navajo Nation Reservation. There was lots of pull-ins along the way selling local crafts and almost all the stops had tourists pulled up making purchases. The views were still exceptional and the drive would have been even more enjoyable if our stiff car suspension had been a better match for the roads but going fast or slow made no difference. It was truly the roughest surface we came on during the entire journey so far.

Realising that we were as close to Monument Valley as we’d ever be on this trip we seriously considered re-routing so that we could drive through it. However, with only one western fan in the car and with our serious need for a rest day in mind, we decided it would be best to give it a miss for the sake of a well-needed easy day of driving.

We had one of our closest low-fuel encounters along this stretch of road. Some unexpected and intensive road works brought us far off the highway and miles from the safety of regular gas stations. Having already had the low fuel light come on long before we came on the roadworks we were beginning to sweat the further the detour took us from the highway. Eventually, after miles and miles of country road, the detour turned back towards the highway and we made it to a Chevron just as we were surely starting to run on fumes. We’d be a little less gung ho on the fuel front from here on. Still, despite the drama, it was nice to be off the highway for a change and getting the chance to see some back roads. Hopefully next time we’d have more fuel onboard!

The scenery changed a little as we moved from Arizona to New Mexico. Instead of the long plains with mounds we got a little more green, cactus spotted ground.

Our Motel 6 in Holbrook was easy to find, just off the interstate on a street consisting mainly of motels. We checked in early and found the room to be pretty good compared to some others we’d stayed at. To our everlasting shame….we went to Pizza Hut for some cheap and filling food. We were finding ourselves in far too many fast food joints on this trip but that was somewhat inevitable given the amount of driving we were doing. Still, we couldn’t possibly keep it up and we were already thinking hard on what alternatives we could conjure up to reduce the amount of fast food we were eating. But anyway, this one time, Pizza Hut happened to be right down the road and was the best of many worse options in this truck stop town.

Back at the motel we caught up on some Game of Thrones, watching the last episodes of the season. We also caught up with family at home, napped, showered and planned the coming week.

Up early the next morning we were still a little tired but happy to be headed for Santa Fe, a four hour drive away.

our next destination: Sante Fe ⇒