Getting There: Grand Canyon - Sep 13th to 14th, 2019
Friday the 13th of September was our lucky day. It was finally time to leave home for our long anticipated Grand Canyon trip. We took a scenic route over two days to get to the Grand Canyon. The first night we stopped in Devils Canyon Campground near Blanding, Utah before continuing on to the South Rim where we had reservations at Mather Campground inside Grand Canyon National Park.
The last few days before our departure were spent trying to finalize our backpacks. We picked out our food and weighed every single little item in our packs. Then we were trying to decide what was truly necessary. What made us a little nervous was learning that Phantom Ranch closed down from August 29th to September 3rd due to a broken water pipeline (Grand Canyon News Release). This concerned us for two reasons. We knew that the aging Transcanyon Pipeline, built in the 1960’s, which supplies water to the South Rim and along the Cross Canyon Corridor, is not reliable, which means we may have to carry more water (and weight) than would be necessary if the water sources along the trail were available. The other reason is that we have one lunch, one dinner and one breakfast reserved for us at Phantom Ranch. But, if we cannot rely on Phantom Ranch being open, then we need to carry extra meals in our packs, just in case, again more weight. So we were trying to eliminate as much weight as possible. Is it necessary that we both carry a first aid kit? No, we can share just one.
On Friday the 13th, we headed west from Denver on I-70. Despite being an interstate, it is a rather scenic drive through the mountains, especially through Glenwood Canyon. We enjoy the drive as long as the traffic is not bad and the road is not covered with snow or ice, in other words, when it’s not ski season. After entering Utah, we headed south on route 128. Shortly after leaving I-70 there is a little ghost town of Cisco. We understand there is actually one resident, Eileen Muza, who has fixed up some of the buildings and even rents out the old post office to visitors. That might be an interesting experience. Route 128 takes a little more time than heading down US 191, but the scenery is spectacular. After a few miles, it meets up and follows the Colorado River through a gorgeous canyon which becomes the southern boundary of Arches National Park. Route 128 ends at US 191, just north of Moab. After a potty stop at the McDonalds in Moab, we continued south on US 191 to Devils Canyon Campground.
Devils Canyon Campground is run by the National Forest Service, located in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. Again, thank you Campendium for helping us find another great campground. For $10 per night, you get a picnic table, fire ring, drinking water and vault toilets. The campground is near the highway, but sits up a little higher in the trees so the traffic noise is not that noticeable. A nature trail at the other end of the campground from our campsite was marked on the map, so we took a walk to check it out. The nature trail was not much to write about, but we enjoyed the walk through the campground. The south loop of the campground has many trees for shade and privacy, but the north loop has a much more forested feel. The setting sun provided nice light on the pine, juniper, spruce, willow, scrub oak and yucca as a couple of deer passed through. We were fascinated by a neighboring camper whose cat wandered around his site without wandering off, no leash required. Have you ever known a cat that wouldn’t wander off at the first opportunity? We haven’t before this one. After watching the waxing gibbous moon rise, we turned in for the night.
On Saturday, we got up to watch the sunrise. Then we continued down US 191 to Bluff where we stopped for gas at Canyon Country. Right Buddy (RB) cleaned the van windows while Left Buddy (LB) walked inside the store to get some coffee. LB came back out to tell RB about his discovery. There’s an unexpectedly nice eight lane bowling alley and 50's diner themed restaurant inside! Now that’s something we’ve never seen before, a bowling alley inside a gas station. After Bluff, we took US 163 so we could pass through Monument Valley Tribal Park. Along the way, we saw an interesting rock formation in the distance that looked like a hat. Oh, we’re approaching the town of Mexican Hat so that must be what the town was named for. Look, there’s a dirt road that leads to the Mexican Hat Rock. So we took it. It was a nice little surprise detour. It is more fun when we “discover” things instead of planning them out. Had we planned that stop, we might have been disappointed. Yup, it’s just a rock, but it's an unusual one.
Monument Valley was a pretty sight to see. Lots of people were stopping and taking pictures of each other while standing in the middle of the road with the buttes in the background at Forrest Gump Hill (named for the famous running scene from the movie) as they dodged the cars that came along. We opted for pictures from the side of the road. No one was hit by a car and we continued on.
We entered Grand Canyon National Park at the east end of the South Rim on route 64. Of course we had to stop at the first viewpoint, Desert View, with its historic Watchtower. The Watchtower was built in 1932, designed by architect Mary Colter with murals inside by Hopi painter Fred Kabotie. We have been to the Grand Canyon once before, but the canyon views never get old. They are always spectacular. While we ate our lunch at the picnic tables at Desert View, we had lots of visitors from the animal kingdom. The squirrels and birds were quite aggressive. A large raven was sitting on top of the picnic table next to ours and talking to us. He made sounds we had never heard before from a raven. It was like a sequence of guttural noises and clicks. From there we moved on to Lipan Point. The rest of the viewpoints will have to wait until next weekend, when we return this way as we head back home.
After getting settled into our campsite at Mather Campground, we hopped on the Blue Village Route shuttle bus and got off at the Backcountry Information Center. We had two goals for the day. The first was to make sure we could park our campervan in Lot D while we were backpacking rim to rim for five days and the second was to judge how long it would take us to walk from Lot D over to the Bright Angel Lodge where we needed to meet for our shuttle ride over to the North Rim the next morning. We walked into the Backcountry office just in time to witness a couple of kids receiving their Junior Ranger badges. They were taking an oath to help protect the parks and the environment. The Park Ranger was having a little fun with it and included a promise to limit their screen time to one hour per day. It was fun to watch. Using parking Lot D was not going to be problem. The Ranger recorded our license plate number and the dates we would be leaving our van in the parking lot and linked it to our backcountry permit in the system. She also took some time to stress the importance of safety, staying hydrated and carrying plenty of water with us. There were also all sorts of displays around the lobby area with horror stories of less fortunate hikers, even some that were well prepared, losing their lives in the canyon. The biggest take away we got from our conversation with the Park Ranger was, if we started feeling ill, stop hiking. From the Backcountry Center, we walked over to the Bright Angel Lodge. It only took us about ten minutes. Our goals were accomplished for the day and we could focus on relaxing and the panoramic views.
Walking behind the Bright Angel Lodge to take in more views of the canyon, we saw a snack bar with hand dipped ice cream. Ice cream! That sounded like the perfect idea, so we waited in the somewhat long line to get our share. Life doesn’t get much better than this, sitting on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, taking in the views while eating ice cream!
We took the shuttle bus back to the campground. There is a shuttle stop just to the west of the Bright Angel Lodge, but that is Hermits Rest Route Transfer and the line to get on the shuttle was long. There is another shuttle stop to the east of Bright Angel Lodge (which is called Bright Angel Lodge shuttle stop) which didn’t have much of a line, so we opted for that one. That meant we were on the bus a few minutes longer, but we were able to get on the next shuttle instead of waiting for the second or third one. The buses run about every ten to fifteen minutes during the daylight hours.
Even though we had our dessert first (ice cream), we had no problem eating dinner when we got back to the campground. We went to bed early and tried to sleep. The excitement and a little bit of nerves were making it hard to settle down. This was really happening! Tomorrow morning we catch our ride to the North Rim!
Check out our related video: From Denver to the Grand Canyon.
(RB)