We got on the road fairly early (for us) after a breakfast at Crackerbarrel. Our plan was to get to Flagstaff between 12:30 and 1:00, so we could check in to the hotel (if they had our room ready) and then scoot over to the Grand Canyon.
A continuation of what we were seeing in western New Mexico, eastern Arizona's viewscape was different, with lots of big rocks and beautiful colors. It was a very pretty ride, slowly changing from rocks to scrubby trees to big trees.
During our ride we looked at our phones and saw that it was an hour earlier than we expected. We had forgotten that because Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time, when we crossed the border, we gained another hour! We pulled into the Fort Tuthill Air Force Recreation Area at 11:30. Oh joy, oh rapture! We had another hour to enjoy the Grand Canyon! Luckily the hotel had a room for us (no problem, actually; this is their shoulder season and there were only 6 other people checking in!), so we dropped our bags and headed out.
It took an hour to drive from Fort Tuthill (just outside Flagstaff) to the South Rim via Williams on I-40. The drive would have been boring, were it not for the frantic texts and phone calls with the title company back in Florida, trying desperately to get a payoff amount for our aunt's mortgage on her condo from Wachovia Bank. Good heavens, you'd think that when you're trying to give a bank over $30,000, they wouldn't fight you so much... well, that's another story.
Anyway, except for the banking issues, the ride was uneventful along the road north from Williams. The landscape was unremarkable, with no hint that there would soon be a big hole in our way. I could easily see how the first people to travel this way could have been lulled into thinking their passage north or west would have been easy.
I found myself actually getting more and more excited as we got to the town outside the park and then finally into the park itself. We parked the car at the South Rim visitor center - still having no idea that there's a gaping hole in store - and followed the crowd along the detour to the Rim Trail (it's being upgraded).
Once I stepped onto the main part of the trail, all I said for the next two hours was some variation on "wow!" or "holy cow!" For those of you who haven't been there yet, you must go; there are simply no words to describe its beauty and no photographs that can capture the feeling. For those of you who have gone, I think you probably know what I'm talking about. I was catching flies with my jaw dropping and mouth gaping so much.
We walked the Rim Trail to the Havasupi station and a little bit beyond to the west, then backtracked and went as far as we could go to the east (this was where the trail was being upgraded). We walked out to the promontories with little ledges (and fences) and pretty much just stared at all the beauty. We used the binoculars in the Havasupi station to find 2 hikers on a trail 'waaaaaaay down below, little specks even with the binoculars; virtually unfindable without them.
We sat, we looked, we walked, we sat, we took pictures, we looked. We were there for about an hour-and-a-half, then got back in the car and left the park. We didn't back-track the same way we came, but instead headed east, to visit the Desert View station and exit the east gate to connect with highway 89.
The Desert View station has a tall building, the Watchtower, which was built, not by the native Americans (although that's what it was designed to look like), but by a souvenir company specifically to entice tourists! You can climb up to the top of this structure and get an even further view of the surrounding area, which had a totally different look and feel from the South Rim. To the east, it was relatively flat; the Painted Desert. To the north, you could more easily see the Colorado River, which looked far wider than it was at the South Rim. The vegetation was different and there was more of it. I really enjoyed this different look, too.
The ride east was more scenic than the ride north to the Rim was. Vast fields, broken up by deep canyons, and scattered houses on the edges of cliffs overlooking magnificent vistas. And since we were on Indian reservation land (Navajo and Hopi, I think), every scenic vista parking area had booths with native art and jewelry.
Once back on the main road (highway 89) heading back to Flagstaff, we finally realized that we were hungry - we had been so excited to get to the Grand Canyon, we hadn't eaten since breakfast in Gallup - so we scouted out a local Mexican restaurant, Kachina, in downtown Flagstaff. Pretty good, with tasty margaritas. Back at the hotel, we did our final load of laundry on the trip, and crashed pretty hard into bed.
Tomorrow, day 7, heading to Vegas, baby!
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