Had a good breakfast at the hotel dining room at 08:30 then off to the Grand Canyon in bright sunshine and very warm temperatures. From Cameron, we drove 30 miles to the canyon up Highway 89 to the east entrance to Grand Canyon National Park. From the parking lot just inside the entrance, we walked to the our first view of the Grand Canyon at Desert View. It is difficult to describe the first view of such a marvel. As teens like to say, "It is totally awesome". The scale is beyond anything that any photo can display.
Right on the edge of a point stands The Watchtower.http://scienceviews.com/parks/watchtower.html This amazing structure looks a century or more old but in fact was built between 1930 and 1933. The architect, Mary Coulter, was painstaking in her efforts to build a viewpoint and souvenir shop that would be a part of, rather than a distraction to the landscape.
After our visit to Desert View, we drove to Grand Canyon Village where we parked the car and picked up a free shuttle which ran along the south rim from there to a lookout named Hermit’s Rest, about 8 km distance. There are several stops along the way where we were able to get off for a view of the canyon and re-board the next shuttle, or hike the rim trail to the next viewpoint to re-board.. At one viewpoint called the Abyss, we were looking straight down a sheer face to the canyon floor 3000 feet below.
I won’t pretend to have the linguistics skills to describe the majesty we saw, nor even the photographic skills to show it. I will simply state that Diane and I were awestruck by the beauty and scale of it all.
The other thing that I found was that I was not accustomed to the altitude of the place at between 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Between the heat and the thin air, I had to stop often to catch my breath.
By supper time, we were pretty well tired out from the heat, exercise and thin air and drove back to our hotel in Cameron. After resting up and cleaning up, we enjoyed another fine Mexican-Navaho supper and retired for the night. It had been a very good day.
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