"Touring America 2008"
'The Grand Canyon'
And so the following day we set off for the Grand Canyon, sure to be a highlight of the holiday. We took Interstate 40 and as we passed a signpost for Seligman we knew that we were only a short distance from the historic Route 66 which traverses America but is not navigable along its whole length. We didn't have time to take a detour but someday maybe we we'll hire a couple of Harleys and take a road trip (!!). We stayed the night in an RV park within striking distance of the canyon and the next day made our way to Tusayan, parking up in the Grand Canyon 'Camper Village' which enabled us to catch a bus into the canyon and save the trouble of parking there.
This we did and shortly we arrived at the visitors center in Grand Canyon Village. The part of the canyon we visited is at the east end of the canyon; the famous skywalk owned and run by the Navajo Indian Nation is at the west end of the canyon. We took many photos of the canyon trying to capture the splendour of it and the shear scale of the experience which of course is just not possible. It's hard to imagine that the tiny thread at the bottom of the canyon is actually the Colorado river. Some visitors trekked down to lower levels but for me with my arthritic ankles a comfortable viewing bench at the top sufficed. We saw William 'Buckey' O'Neill's cabin which he built on the rim of the canyon in 1890 in what would eventually become Grand Canyon National Park. O'Neill was, among many other things, a member of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and he was instrumental in establishing what would eventually become the Grand Canyon Railroad.
We decided to take a helicopter ride over the canyon and as they loaded the helicopter it became apparent that in order to evenly balance the weight Jane and myself as the smallest would have to sit in the front with the pilot which turned out to be a real stroke of good fortune. Able to look through the glass bottom at the front of the helicopter we probably had the best view of the ground below us and as we approached the rim of the canyon we had a fantastic view of the canyon opening out before us as we crossed the rim. Although an expensive ride we didn't regret any of it as the view of the canyon and the river below was so much better than from higher up and at the edge; this was also probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
The Grand Canyon lived up to all our expectations but finally it was time to move on and our next stop was the Glen Canyon Dam; at ~700ft above water this dam is only slightly smaller than the Hoover Dam (726ft) which was not on our route. It's always interesting reading the information plaques at places we visit and after reading a citation from John Wesley Powell, I decided to read up on it and found that it was he who discovered and named the Glen Canyon. Powell was a soldier who fought in the civil war, where he lost his right arm, and subsequently became an adventurer and naturalist. He led the Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869 which explored (and mapped) the Colorado and Green rivers and made the first recorded passage by a white man through the entirety of the Grand Canyon.
We spent some time looking round and resting up overlooking Lake Powell (named after JWP), which has been formed by the dam and has become a water and natural sports attraction for visitors. We stayed overnight in Kanab, Utah prior to our visits to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park.
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