Up at 7 o'clock, as usual, Broke camp quickly before the authorities moved in on my spectacular but illegal bivouac.
As I was loading the Defender, one of those very oddly painted vans that travelers rent for their road vacations pulled up. Readers of the 2016 blog will that the same thing happened on the Banff Jasper highway, and what happened after that. Out of the van popped two delightfully charming young ladies from Rhode Island, Bella and Diona, who were taking in the Grand Canyon for the weekend after a conference in Las Vegas. The two of them bonded with Donner not only rapidly but completely. The two of them were as much out of control as Donner was with them..
I got on the road at 9 o'clock, and on the way back to Jacob Lake discovered at least a half dozen cutoffs that would have been fine for bivouacs. Had I seen them in the dark on the way down to my bivouac, I clearly would have settled into one of them for the night. Thank goodness I did not see them because of the deaf work but I found.
I also discovered that when I was heading down by mistake to the north rim, thinking I was on the road that will take me to the south rim, I was only one mile from the north rim camp that was indeed open. Having been advised it was closed, I turned the defender around and drove the 50 miles to my eventual bivouac for the night. I am kind of surprised at the quality of information about major things here, like campgrounds being open.
The drive down to the Grand Canyon was absolutely spectacular. Almost 100 miles off of read Mesa bordering the highway on one side. If that is all I got to see of the Grand Canyon, I would've been satisfied.
As I got within 50 miles of the South-rim entrance to the Grand Canyon, the anxiety started setting in. Will I find a camp site in the one campground that was open, Mather campground. Fortunately Bella and Diona indicated that they would share a campsite with me if the camp was full, but I failed to get the name that their reservation was under. No big thing, as I learned that there were national forests on all sides of the Grand Canyon where one could pitch a tent for the night. That is, assuming one is not driving in the dark and can see the hidden cutoffs that lead to some of the choice national forest campsites.
Much to my delight, when I checked in at the registration kiosk at Mather camp, there was indeed a campsite for the night. Although my original plan was to stay for only one night, I decided to reserve a campsite for tonight, and then get on the road on Sunday back home.
I took my time settling into the campsite, number 301. At one point when I was unloading things from the roof rack, I looked down where I had secured Donner, and he was gone. Apparently, I had secured him on the leash that was not tied down to the picnic table. I quickly scanned the area and discovered him about 50 feet away just standing there - he was having a stare down contest with a herd of for young elk who had approached the campsite. Donner won, and the elk took off. Close call. But what a good dog he was not to charge them.
Although I was planning to postpone going to the various Canyon rim points - there are 17 of them - where you can view the Grand Canyon in it's splendor, at 5 o'clock, when thecsun was about to set, I decided to make a dash to the view point by the visitor center to catch the sun was already setting. When I finally drive to entrance to the view point, after parking the Defender, Donner had other plans. He wanted to stop and sniff every single smell along the path, and there were many of them, and wanted to go greet the several other dogs who were also there to enjoy the Grand Canyon, at least their owners were very. I had to compromise with him and let him have his way with some of his more interesting sites, but I dragged him on to the viewpoint so that I would not miss any of the fading sun reflecting on the canyons below.
I have seen many photographs and films and videos of the Grand Canyon, but I could not believe my eyes what I saw last night. It is far more spectacular by a long shot then anything i have seen in print or on film. It is perhaps the most beautiful natural spectacle that I have ever seen in my life. I was blown away. I could not take my eyes off it. I am not even going to begin to describe what I saw because I simply don't have the vocabulary to do so. Absolutely magnificent. In fact, it looked almost unreal.
After a half-hour wandering around the rim along a beautifully designed path, I headed back to the Defender in the dark, but could not find it. Eventually I found it, but by this time it was pitch black outside. Then the problem became how I was going to find my way back to the camp with the rather confusing traffic patterns and lack of signage on the road. Fortunately, I had saved the geographical coordinates and so I put my faith in my Garman and it led me right back to site 301 exactly where I parked the Defender when I saved those coordinates in my GPS.
If I see nothing more at the Grand Canyon than what I saw tonight, I will be satisfied. However I do plan to spend to spend all of tomorrow seeing as many of the 17 viewpoints as I possibly can, although for about seven of them you have to walk around trip of 12 miles or take a shuttle bus, but dogs are not allowed on the shuttle bus.
On Sunday, I plan to move on and make as much progress towards Interstate 70 as I can. Interstate 70 will take me home where i belong, 2200 miles away. Since I will be passing by Bears Ears, Arches and Moab, I will try to pay brief visits there and then end up camping at the first campsite, perhaps the national forest spot I stayed in on the Colorado River there back in 2001 with Leben and Erde on our way back from Alaska.
Ed and Donner from fabulous Grand Canyon.
