Tag Archives: Arizona

Grand Canyon National Park: Evening on the North Rim

Krishna Temple (left, rear), Deva Temple (left, foreground), Brahma Temple (center right), and Zoroaster Temple (right) with the South Rim and the San Francisco Peaks

By 4:30 in the afternoon on Friday, September 16, Sean and I were back in the general vicinity of Grand Canyon Lodge. The Visitor Center had not been open in the morning when we went to breakfast, so we stopped in and stamped our passports for Grand Canyon. We also noted the times of sunset and moonrise and the time of the ranger talk at the campground amphitheater, all of which we wanted to experience.

We had a busy evening ahead of us, so we headed back to camp to relax for a bit.

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Grand Canyon National Park: Point Imperial

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In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I was delighted to learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see. We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it. If you deal with irrigation, apply it under circumstances that will make it of benefit, not to the speculator who hopes to get profit out of it for two or three years, but handle it so that it will be of use to the home-maker, to the man who comes to live here, and to have his children stay after him. Keep the forests in the same way. Preserve the forests by use; preserve them for the ranchman and the stockman, for the people of the Territory, for people of the region round about. Preserve them for that use, but use them so that they will not be squandered, that they will not be wasted, so that they will be of benefit to the Arizona of 1953 as well as the Arizona of 1903.

– President Theodore Roosevelt, from Speech at Grand Canyon Arizona, May 6, 1903

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Grand Canyon National Park: Cliff Spring Trail

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After taking in the views at Cape Royal, we drove a short way north on the Walhalla Plateau to Cliff Spring Trailhead for a hike before lunch on Friday, September 16. Cliff Spring Trail drops beneath the rim of the Walhalla Plateau into a steep canyon until it reaches a natural spring about half a mile from the trailhead. The trail continues for another half mile before it peters out. Theodore Roosevelt camped at Cliff Spring during a 1913 hunting trip to the North Rim.

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Grand Canyon National Park: Cape Royal

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Late morning on Friday, September 16, Sean and I climbed into the Jeep and departed North Rim Campground for the Walhalla Plateau, which juts some fourteen miles south into the canyon from the end of the Kaibab Plateau. That morning at breakfast, we had seen the primary view into the canyon from the busiest point on the North Rim (the equivalent of driving into Grand Canyon Village and having a look from the South Rim), but now we wanted to spend the day seeing other aspects of the Grand Canyon from its North Rim. In part because of the Walhalla Plateau, the views from the various vantage points on the North Rim are more varied than those on the South Rim. Our intention was to spend the greater part of the day on the Walhalla Plateau.

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Grand Canyon National Park: Through Fire to the North Rim

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The Transept

It was already 5:45pm (Utah time) on Thursday, September 15 by the time we drove away from Zion National Park en route to the final National Park in our descent of the Grand Staircase.

Grand Canyon National Park was the first National Park I’d visited, twenty-four years earlier when I was thirteen years old. Back before that trip with my aunt and uncle and cousins, I’d read everything I could about the canyon in my Catholic grade school’s small library. I had become enchanted with photos of black Kaibab Squirrels with their tufted ears and white tails. But the squirrels are only found on the North Rim, and on that long-ago trip we’d visited the South Rim. This would be my chance to see a Kaibab Squirrel.

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Bryce Canyon National Park: To the Top of the Stairs

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Aquarius Plateau and Sinking Ship (foreground) from Bryce Canyon National Park

On Friday, September 9, 2016 Sean and I began our trip down the Grand Staircase with an evening flight to Phoenix. More often than not, this was our modus operandi, to fly out after work, stay overnight near the airport, and begin the trip proper on the ground in the morning wherever we were. That Friday, I was more than ready to be gone. It had been a very long week at work, culminating in issues with a new vendor. (I’d ultimately be proven right in my assessment of their shoddy service.) But either way, it would be good to do some hiking in a place I’d wanted to visit since childhood.

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The Grand Staircase: Planning

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Twilight at Bryce Canyon National Park

In 2016, the Centennial Year of the National Park Service (although National Parks had existed for decades prior), Sean and I embarked on a mini-journey to calibrate our Park trips so that by the end of the year, we’d both have visited the same National Parks. That meant that we had to travel to Yosemite, Shenandoah, Dry Tortugas, and Grand Canyon. Along the way, we picked up other Parks near those four so that by the end of the year, we’d visited eight National Parks and thirteen National Park units.

After Yosemite and Channel Islands in May and Shenandoah in June (and Muir Woods, Golden Gate, and Point Reyes in August), we planned to visit the Grand Canyon in September. We knew that we’d want to pick up at least one more Park on a visit to the Grand Canyon. Very early in our planning, we considered a relatively short trip to the South Rim and Petrified Forest National Park, which is near the top of Sean’s list of Parks to visit. But we decided that an extended long weekend was giving both those Parks short shrift.

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Above Grand Canyon National Park

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In August 2016, Sean’s firm sent him to Los Angeles and San Francisco for a week. On Sunday afternoon, August 7, we were treated to spectacular aerial views of southern Utah and northern Arizona. In particular, we were able to see Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, and Grand Canyon National Park, all from the comfortable cruising altitude of American Airlines Flight 2220 from Chicago O’Hare to LAX.

Lake Powell, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

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Grand Canyon National Park (1992)

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In the summer of 1992, a family trip took my aunt, uncle, two cousins and me to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We stayed in a canyon-view room in Thunderbird Lodge. Fanny packs strapped securely around our waists, we strolled the rim looking at the vistas. Drama was provided by an escaped convict who fled into the park causing the closure of a large section of the eastern part of the South Rim, as well as road blocks on the highways in and out of the park.

Thirteen years old, about to start high school in September, I was enthralled by everything.

I had been primed for the park. I’d read every book about the Grand Canyon in my Catholic elementary school’s library. Picture books about the canyon from the 1960s with vividly washed-out photographs of Ponderosa Pines and squirrels with funny little tufted ears, I’d read them all. In particular, I’d read Marguerite Henry’s 1953 historical novel about a semi-wild burro, Brighty of the Grand Canyon.

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