Today is the day, the day Keith sees the Grand Canyon for the first time. I was so excited for him to see the majesty and beauty of what nature has done. I made eggs and french toast again for breakfast and after walking Joey and cleaning up we headed out. We took the car for the 2 mile drive to the rim. They do have a bus that runs but Joey isn.t allowed on so we drove. We arrivied, parked and walked to the south rim enterance. First thing I had to do was get my stamps. They had 4 or 5 of them. I love it. I’m on extra pages in my passport. We have been to some many of the historic sites in the passport on this trip, I have so many new stamps with more to come. Then we walked to the path along the rim. We started at the eastern edge of the south rim (say that 3 times fast) and Keith got his first glimpse. It was fun to watch his face, the awe and amazement. I cried at the beauty, the undescribable beauty before us. However I forgot Keith is very afraid of heights so as I’m trying to get him closer he’s getting a bit panicky. I tried to slow down but I just wanted him to see everything. He actually did quite well especially in places there weren’t a ton of people. We walked to Mather Overlook and I took again a ton of pictures. Keith got one of me and Joey on a big rock at the overlook. We didn’t go much farther than Mather Point because I wanted to get a tee shirt and wanted to go up to the Desert View whicb I had never been to. So we went back toward the Vistor Center. I stopped at a couple of shops, bought t-shirts and a hat, magnets and post cards. And water. Then we started the drive to the Desert View.
It was a long, pretty drive, 26 miles, but they had a number of overlooks. Reminded me of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I must have taken a million pictures. The Desert View, which is also the Eastern Rim, also had The Watchtower, It was a structure, tower, was built in 1932. It was designed by Mary Colter based on the architecture of the Ancestrial Puebloan people of the southwest. We couldn’t go in but it was beautiful, overlooking the canyon. This eastern rim is so different from the southern rim. First you can see the Colorado River where snakes its way through the deep gorge of the canyon. We could also see the Painted Desert in the distance. It’s better up close but still beautiful. The colors of the rocks on the side were different more pink and blue than deep red andgolden brown. I’m very glad we got to come up this way. We were both hot and tired so we stopped at the deli there and split a chicken salad sandwhich. Then I went into the store and got an ice cream and a sweatshirt. We have found that the desert gets very very cold at night. I didn’t bring enough to compensate for that.
The drive back of course seemed shorter and we needed a few things from the store (Keith wanted egg salad and I didn’t have pickle relish) so we stopped at the camp market. Well, I didn’t buy much. A 12 pack of soda was $13.00. Yeesh!! So I got just what we needed and we went back to camp. We were not hungry so I just made a veggie stirfry for dinner (and Keith’s egg salad) and we relaxed the rest of the evening. It was very very nice day. We move again tomorrow. We need to plan better with more days inbetween moves. Wanted to stay here longer.
Majestic Day 16