Monument Valley, 3/24-3/25/2015

Monument Valley

We left the Grand Canyon on 3/23 heading for Monument Valley which is just across the border into southern Utah. The big group of folks from Quebec were a couple days ahead of us so we couldn't get a spot at Goulding's Trading Post (and campground and lodge and restaurant and car wash and gas station and grocery store and pizza place and post office and airport). So we stopped at Cameron's Trading Post (and campground and lodge and gift  shop and restaurant and gas station and post office) at the Little Colorado River heading that way.  Neither location had much of anything else nearby.

Cameron's had a really nice looking lodge and a interesting restaurant decorated with hand woven Navajo rugs and Navajo art work.  We ate in the dining room and stayed in their minimalist campground.

The stone work,  woodwork and art work was impressive.

This is the original 1911 suspension bridge across the Little Colorado.  There is a newer bridge on the other side.  The Mormon Trail crosses near here as well.  This bridge swayed and was creaky from day one.  It is a single lane bridge. It has long since been used for a gas pipeline crossing.  A National Historic Site now.

The next day we drove about 50 miles to Goulding's Campground. The campground was in a narrow canyon whose opening looked out towards Monument Valley.

It was mostly dirt, electric OK, water hard, small,short sites and probably the most expensive campground we have ever sayed in, $48/night!  We are averaging about $20/night.

Monument Valley is a Navajo Tribal Park.  It is located in the Navajo Nation as is Goulding's.  It cost $20 for a four day entrance permit and then you can drive on the one way, rough and dusty road through Monument Valley.  People live in the valley, there is no water anywhere.  They all have water trucks that they fill up at Goulding's.  Oh, it is a water fill station too.  If you don't want to drive you can pay $56 or much more to ride around the park in the back of a pickup truck outfitted with seats and have someone tell you what you ware looking at rather than reading the brochure that tells you.  We drove the Jeep.  The main erosive force in the valley is wind.  It was windy there.  And wind erosion uses fine particles to do its work which creates more fine particles.  Monument Valley is covered with a reddish very fine sand.

The Tribal Park has a Visitor's Center and a Museum.  The museum was mostly about the Tribal system of govenment, the geology and life in the valley. The Visitor's Center was more about the recent history of the valley in movies.  The Goulding's arrived in the 1920s and started a small trading post.  They were fair and honest folk and got along well with the Navajo people.  The Great Depression hit the Navajo particularly hard and the Goulding's as well. They set out for Hollywood with their last $60 to try to convince movie producers that Monument Valley would be a good location for the increasingly popular Western movies. They were persistant and finally met John Ford who looked at their pictures and decided on the spot to shoot his next picture, "Stagecoach", starring John Wayne in Monument Valley. The Goulding's got an advance payment for helping to make all of the arrangements, hire extras and to provide services to the movie crews. Goulding's Lodge soon followed. Dozens of movies have been filmed there.  More recently just scenes. The last movie was the third Transformers film. Lots of adds have been made there too. While this provides revenue to the Navajo Nation and they are able to control use and exploitation of the Valley it does not provide jobs. Production companies today and for a long time bring everything they need with them, all of the equipment and all of the people, even food and cooks and very tight schedules and budgets.  Not much local spending.

Most of the features in Monument Valley are volcanic in origin, lava pushing up into cracks and holes in the ancient sea bed.  All of this was easily eroded leaving just the columns.  Many looked like Devil's Tower in Wyoming, same geology, even a close encounter with a movie there.  

You can just about see the swaggering John Wayne kicking up dust, Pilgrim. These are called The East and West Mittens.

And Elephant Butte, with some imagination.  The other side looked like nothing.  

The Sisters.  It is supposed to be a nun and her two students.  We looked but couldn't see the ruler.

Some of these spires are vary narrow.  There be cowgirls, too.

Very few trees.

A homestead in the shadow of the cliff.

There is a string of horses riding across the dune.  Everything is very big.

And out towards the north, nothing but dust.

Monument Valley is another one of those places that is almost too big to show in photos.  But being there was very impressive.  Glad we went.

Next Cortez, CO and Mesa Verde.

Until next time,

Roger and Susan

Grand Canyon National Park, 3/13-3/23/2015, Part 4

North Kaibab Trailhead

We set aside a day for a bike ride out to the North Kaibab Trailhead.  It was about 3-1/2 miles out on the Greenway Trail.  This is a walking/biking trail that follows along the rim.  Most of the biking allowed trails are back from the rim and lead through the woods.  There are about 20-30 miles of Greenway trails.  You can ride your bike on any of the paved roads as well.  About the only place you can not ride a bike is where there is no trail or on unpaved trails.  

We were able to leave directly from the campgound on a connector trail that went by the water strorage tanks for the main South Rim area.  There were five huge steel tanks, 80 - 100 ft in diameter and 25 ft tall.  There is a lot of infrastructure that is hidden from view to support the vast number of people who come to visit the National Park (about 5 million each year).  This trail went to the Visitor's Center and connected to the trail following the rim to the east.  Like so many ways we went in the park there was something amazing at every turn.

It is a treat to be able to take the time to go slow and see these things. Riding bikes is a good way to do this. So is walking. We ran into a couple of significant hills both up and down on the way out to the South Kaibab Trailhead. The upsides were challenging, the downsides were fast but we perservered.

The helmets are very stylish.  On the way out we ran across some elk, wapiti, no horns so they were cows. They were right on the side of the trail, maybe 30 ft away.

At the trailhead there was a large mule corral and barns.  This is the main departure and return point for mule supply trains to the Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon.  It is also where one and two night overnight mule trips to Phantom Ranch start and end.  These are pretty pricey.  There are similar opportunities from the North Rim.

The main thing to do here is to hike down into the canyon. There is some water and a few rest rooms on the way.  The trailhead is at 7,260 ft. There is a 3 mile round trip that goes down about 1200'.  The estimated time was 3-5 hours.  This is probably the most frequent hike. There are other trips further down that take longer.  Down to the bottom of the canyon at 2,480 ft elevation was over 7 miles, an all day hike one way.

The South Kaibab Trail was built by the NPS in the 1920's after many years trying to get control of the Bright Angel Trail without success.  The Park Service wanted a public access trail into the canyon.  So the South Kaibab Trail went into the canyon from the south.  The North Kaibab Trail descends from Bright Angel Point on the North Rim where the North Rim Lodge, campground and Visitor's Center are located.

The two trails meet at a suspension bridge over the Colorado River near the Phantom Ranch.

(Another internet picture, thanks to someone) I didn't actually walk down here.

We could see the trail heading down with people going both ways.

And then up came a mule train.

People stand aside.  Mules rule. And they looked like they knew they were near the end of the trail where their loads would be removed and there was water and food .  They were not going to be denied.

I followed the mules back towards the barns where they were being unloaded and there were more elk, about 10 of them, just wandering around.  They seem almost tame but they are not. They are much bigger than deer.

There was a big muddy puddle left over from the snow a few weeks earlier.  One of the elk just flopped over in the puddle for a bit of a "bath".

More great views on the way back.  And all of those hills on the trail seemed less challenging and the route much shorter.  Funny how that works. When we got back to the campground there were seven more elk.  We didn't see any until just the last few days we were there.

And then I ran across this motorhome in the campground.

Pretty neat to see one of these from Hawaii.  We saw one several years ago at the EAA convention in Oshkosh, WI.  We have seen many from Alaska, most every province in Canada, states from Maine to Florida, Washington to California, Minnesota to Texas.  It is clear to us that people are traveling and in every imaginable way.  

We have had an RV of one sort or another since 1974 so our days in a tent are long past but after more than 40 years of traveling this way we are hooked.  It is a lifestyle choice, not everyone's, but ours. Time seems to slow down when you focus on the present and let all of the distractions slide away.  

Our days at the Grand Canyon are coming to an end.  We are heading east and north to Monument Valley for a few days.  In all of the times we have been in this area it is a place we have never been to.  

We are going to miss the giant Meteor Crater near Winslow, AZ.  Also the site of a great movie, "Starman" with his "Dudeness" Jeff Bridges. One of my favorites.  We saw a public TV show about Route 66 with Billy Connelly.  He visited this site on his cross country motorcycle trip and was very excited to see what every American man wants to see, a really big hole in the ground.

More later.

Roger and Susan

Grand Canyon National Park, 3/13-3/23/2015, Part 3

Grandview Point, Navajo Point, Tusayan Ruins, Desert View Watchtower

 

The buses run east to Yaki Point.  But if you want to go out to the far eastern part of the Grand Canyon NP you have to drive about 25 miles.  Along the way you drive by many overlooks.  

We stopped at Grandview Point. Across the canyon you can see the high Walhalla Plateau ending at Cape Royal on the North Rim. Susan and I were there in 2004 when we visited the North Rim. A Park Ranger at the North Rim told us that less than 10% of all visitors to the Grand Canyon make it to the North Rim.  Less than 10% of those few North Rim visitors ever leave the road ways and follow the trails along the North Rim. We hiked about 12 miles on these trails.

Cape Royal is at the end of the flat plateau on the left side of the horizon.  While we were at Grandview Point we saw two California Condors. They have a wingspan of about 7ft. They were almost extinct thirty years ago but with a captive breeding program there are now more than two hundred Condors living in the canyon. Even still, they are rarely seen and seeing two was pretty amazing.

They are very large and easily identified by numbers and colored tags on their wings. I'd like to take credit for this picture but it came from the internet. The distance across the Grand Canyon from Grand View Point to Cape Royal is one of the shortest crossings so this is a great place to watch migrating birds.

Navajo Point was not too much further along toward Desert View. There was still snow on the canyon walls.

Navajo Point looks out over the site of the worst airline disaster in US history at that time.  On June 30, 1956 a United Airlines DC7 and a TWA Super Constellation collided at 21,000 ft and crashed into the canyon near Temple and Chuar Buttes. All 128 passengers and crew died.  Within a few years Congress established the FAA to improve airline safety.  This area of the Grand Canyon has special protections and restrictions. Remnants are still being discovered.  29 unidentified remains were buried at the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetary. 70 passengers from the TWA flight were  buried in a common grave in Flagstaff. The other 29 remains were returned to their homes for burial.

These two Buttes are in the canyon to the left of the river.

Further along we came to the Tusayan Ruins.  These are the remnants of an agricultural pueblo built about 1185AD and occupied for about 20 years. It was a small U shaped pueblo with the open end facing south and the sun.  There were living and storage rooms and a Kiva.  This site was listed on the National Register of Historic sites in 1974.  There are more than a thousand known archeological sites in the Grand Canyon.  Only 5% of canyon has been explored.

There was an interesting interpretive museum (not an original building) and of course a gift shop.

This building style with stones fit together and mortared with clay and mud is typical of the puebloan building style of this period. How the stones are shaped and fitted together as well at the mortar mix helps date these sites.

There was a path through a wooded area and on to an open area in a small valley where farming would have taken place.  A small stream probably flowed at times through the valley to help with crops. There was evidence of a small dam to hold water. Signs along the trail identified the different plants of today that were likely the same then and how different parts of the plants were used for tools, food, medicine, fibers and building materials.  Weather and plant life was likely similar to what it is today. It is interesting to begin to know and understand life and cultures that were here long before any Europeans  came.

And then on to the Desert View and the Watchtower. The Watchtower is another Mary Colter designed building. While it looks very old it is another early 20th century structure built to look what the designers thought a much older building would have looked like.  The Watchtower has a steel inner framework hidden in the very carefully selected stone work.  The tower has five levels and a stairway to the top.

Beyond this area to the east the land flattens out, the desert view.

It really isn't that old but built to look like it.  The inside has extraordinary decoration.

Looking up is even more amazing.

It was really quite stunning.

Hanging on, Susan got near a railing.

Looking back to the west, the canyon seems to go on forever.

There are many more opportunities to see the river at this end.

In the Watchtower there were several "ReflectoScopes".  These are highly polished black mirrors.  When viewing the canyon in these mirrors the colors are said to be much more vivid.

They did have a great look.

This was a great ride, lots to see and learn.  There is a campground at Desert View that is open in the summer.  There was a nice picnic area as well where we ate our lunch. 

Another experience at the Grand Canyon that seems special.  Seeing two Condors, learning about a plane crash over the Grand Canyon that was a subject of a Tony Hillerman mystery feturing Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn and seeing the artistry at the Watchtower.

A couple more days ahead.  We have been riding our bikes on short rides getting used to the 7,000 ft altitude getting ready for a longer ride out to the North Kaibab Trailhead.

More later.

Roger and Susan

 

Grand Canyon National Park, 3/13-3/23/2015, Part 2

Hermit's Rest

Hermit's Rest is another Mary Colter designed Grand Canyon building which also include the Lookout, the Watchtower and the Hopi House. It was built in 1914 at the west end of the Rim Trail for the Fred Harvey Company and is meant to look old and natural. The original hermit, Louis Boucher, staked claims in the canyon in 1891 below this point and carved the Hermit Trail down to where he lived alone at Dripping Springs and eventually further down to the bottom of the canyon. The Hermit's Rest was a way station and rest stop for horse drawn stage coaches on their way to a Fred Harvey camp called Hermit's Camp. The camp has vanished with time but Hermit's Rest remains and is a National Historic Landmark. 

This was a bus ride that took about an hour round trip.  It was much longer if you got off to see the canyon from all of the stops it made.  And every stop was worth getting off and just being there for a while. This ended up being an all day event for us.

The views are amazing. Different times of the day make everything look different. One day was overcast and I thought it made the deep canyon more vivid.  

Susan started out not wanting to get anywhere near the edge. As the days went on she got a bit better and with some hand holding, she got pretty close.

Hermit's Rest is announced with an archway with a bell.

Fitting to the influence of the railroad the bell is hung from a piece of railroad rail. It was rung to call the resting stagecoach passengers back to finish their ride to the Hermit's Camp.

Down the path towards the canyon rim to the Hermit's Rest itself.

There was a large welcoming fireplace of an interesting design.  Sort of a 1/4 sphere. No marshmallows today.

Can you guess what else is here today?  Why gifts and souveniers and a snack shop.  Susan got some hot chocolate, I had a great cup of coffee.  There were some very nice matted photos that we thought were nice. The matting was especially unique. We thought they would be at another shop so we didn't buy anything.  We never saw them again so we made a return trip to the Hermit's Rest to reconsider. They are very nice.

Some of the best canyon views were on this part of the Rim Trail. Deep side canyons everywhere, many with remnants of the 2 feet of snow they got here about two weeks before we arrived.

Almost every area not facing the sun all day had some snow left.

It is hard to describe or even show in pictures the scale of the Grand Canyon. This is one place I just barely wish I had a more capable camera (beyond my iPhone).  The range of light levels is huge and one part of the picture will be ok and another underexposed or overexposed.  In this grandeuer it is hard sometimes to get it right.

It is 277 miles long, a mile deep and just huge.

We went to a Ranger program one day where she talked about Grand Canyon Geology. We like to go to these because there is so much to learn if you are interested.

The bottom layer of rock is called the Basement Rocks and consists of several layers of very hard basalt and granite. These were formed 2-1/2 billion years ago as tectonic plates collided and pushed over and under each other.  (By the way, the exposed rock on much of the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota is 4-1/2 billion years old, some of the oldest know rock on the planet!) All of this slowly cooled and sank.  Over the next billion and a half years, give or take a week or two, this area was covered by oceans, layers thousands of feet thick were deposited and rock formed. Oceans retreated and returned over and over this entire area laying down all of the different layers one sees today.  The layers can be carbon dated so scientists know the age of each layer.  There is one discontinuity between layers where a million years or so is missing.  That entire layer was deposited and then eroded before the next layer was formed.

After all of this deposition came uplift.  The entire Colorado Plateau was lifted up by forces deep in the earth.  And rather than being folded and broken the entire plateau was lifted evenly.  That is why the horizontal lines of the canyon are so uniform.  All the while this uplift was occuring over millions of years the Colorado River flowed through this area.  Water and sand and rocks began carving down into the layers.  Water flowed in from the sides making side canyons bigger and deeper.  More and more silt, gravel, rocks and boulders added to the force of the water to grind away at the canyon.  There were no dams so this was an enormous erosion event.  All of this happened long before the glaciers. 

But there were dams.  Scientists think that between 40,000 and 1.5 million years ago at least 13 lava dams have blocked the flow of the river.  These took from just a few days to form to thousands of years to finally block the river.  There is evidence that some of these dams backed the river up as far as Moab, UT.  The river and erosion always win out and over tens of thousands of years all of these dams were breached and the canyon got deeper and wider.

The Ranger described the river flow in this way. Even with the dams on the river today and the flow managed the river is about 300 ft wide at the bottom of the canyon. A basket ball is about one cubic foot in size. Normal water flow at any point in the canyon is about 13,000 cubic feet per second. That is a lot of basketballs going by every second. Since the dams have been built the flow has been as high as 30,000 cubic feet per second. Before the dams were built the spring melt brought measured flows of more than 300,000 cubic feet per second.  

She also told us that where we sat on the canyon rim was 2-3,000 feet below the surface of the Colorado Plateau when the big uplift began.  All of that rock, everywhere for hundreds of miles in every direction has been eroded by wind and water over millions of years.  So even though the Grand Canyon is a mile deep today it has actually been carved through a mile and a half of rock to get where it is now.

So the geology story is interesting, the people story is interesting, the story of the ancient puebloan cultures and their predecessors that have lived in this area since about 14,000 AD is interesting, the plants, trees and animals are interesting as well as the visitors who come to see it today, they are interesting too.

Our blog readers are interesting too, your comments and feedback is always welcome.

So that was Hermit's Rest and a bit of geology jibber jabber.  

Next up is The Watchtower at the far end of the organised part of the Grand Canyon.

Roger and Susan