A Grand Adventure - Day 4 (Devil's Tower, North Rim, and Tree puns)

Thursday morning, we woke up, ate breakfast and started out driving toward the north rim.  On the way we decided to stop at Desert View Tower which was more or less on the way.

 The tower itself is pretty cool with a spiral staircase around the inside and a lot of Native American artwork on the walls.

Each level of the tower had viewing windows which you could enjoy great views of the canyon.  

In my opinion, these were some of the best views of not just the canyon, but the Colorado River, too.

Afer snapping some pictures, we bought gas at a nearby station ($2.84/ gallon) and then continued our drive toward the north rim.  The north rim is about 1,200 feet higher than the south rim so we expected our drive would involve climbing some hills.  We were hoping the transmission of the vans would hold up since there was NOTHING around for many miles.  

No roadsigns. No billboards.  No signs of civilization.

 Occasionally on a long incline the vans would pop into a lower gear and engine would whine as the rpms would jump above 3,000, and we'd have to slow down a bit.  I don't think I mentioned that while our camper van was on the newer side (63,000 miles) the Hall's van had 235,000 miles!

We knew we would be driving through a long stretch of Native American land on this drive. Once and awhile there would be a roadside stripmall of sorts crudely pieced together with plywood. 

This was one of the bigger ones.

Inside they would sell various handmade Native American knickknacks or jewelry.  Assuming everything is actually handmade, the workmanship on the things they sell is really beautiful and intricate.  Jen bought an ornament, and I think some others bought some jewelry.  I discovered that they do not barter over the price.  I had a theory that this was an agreement among all of the members of the tribe (I think they are Havasupai) not to undercut each other's prices because they all had almost the exact same prices for the same types of items.  After I saw the types of homes they appeared to live in, I felt bad even asking for less than the price they were asking for.

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Every so often we would drive by a Native American community and the homes were of a similar condition, very simple and often run down looking.  Just for verification, I looked up the poverty rate for the area, and it was nearly 40%. That's very sad.

 

Talking about this with Jen, she and I wondered if our government hadn't given these lands to the Native Americans because of the harsh almost uninhabitable conditions here. Other than raising cattle, there seems to be very little sustainable farming here.

Now, on the western side of the canyon, the Havasupai have a nice Grand Canyon business going.  There you can do the only 1 day rafting of the canyon, purchase helicopter tours, or walk on the their famous skywalk.....at a price.

Rafting....$500/ person
Helicopter ride.....$200/person
Walk the skywalk......$80/adult

Yikes!  That's too rich for us.

As we passed through the Native American lands, we came to a bridge over the Colorado River.  We pulled off for a potty break and to walk on the pedestrian bridge for a better view.

I'm hoping this sign is to discourage bungee jumping enthusiasts

The view was of the river and canyon was spectacular, and it was relaxing to watch people on rafts floating slowly down the river.

The river had a lot of algae and was flowing very gently, I'm guessing because of their lack of rain.

The bridge we drove over

 

From here, we continued on and decided to drive directly to the park to see the north rim rather than go the campground.  

We decided to do a very easy hike called the Bright Angel Trail.  While it was not physically taxing, it did have a lot of anxiety producing drop offs, sometimes on both sides.  Beth was having to do a lot of positive self talk to get her to the end of the hike, but she didn't give up.

Here's a short video of the hike and the views:

On the way back to our campground, we stopped by some of the park signs for some group pictures.

The terrain here was unique compared to what we had seen so far with huge green meadows and tall pines.  There were signs for bison crossing, and it reminded me a lot of the type of large open spaces we saw in the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone where we saw hundreds of bison.

I bet we're the first family to ever take a picture here.

Note to self:  Bring a mini tripod next time so you don't have to use rocks and hats to get a full group picture.

Our campsite for the night.  Running water by the bathrooms, but no showers and pit toilets.  We're roughin' it tonight.

  

That night there was a ranger presentation in a nearby amphitheater called "The Secret Life of Trees."  



 
As we set-up our campfire we started preparing some tree puns to use.  We dropped these on the naturalist as we sat down in the amphitheater:

• Oooh, there's a lot of people here, this presentation must be very poplar!  
• Can we ash you a question?
• Its chilly, I bet you wish you had a fir coat.
• Is is Oak-kay if I sit here?
• I am re-leafed that we can learn something new today.
• We always try to sycamore knowledge.

Our naturalist was very tolerant of our groan-worthy puns.  As a science and nature geek I found the presentation really cool and informative.  I felt like I learned a lot from what she shared.  For example, I never knew that trees won't thrive in a greenhouse environment because they need stress (like pushing from wind) to form strong roots and bark. 

 

As she progressed through the slideshow, we could feel the temperature dropping considerably.  How could this be? We had hours ago driven through the desert where it was over 100º and now we were needing to put on hoodies and stocking hats for warmth. As soon as the presentation finished we rushed over to the campfire which fortunately Rogan had been keeping going.


We saw that the sky was really clear and star-filled so we decided to go out in the field at the front of the campground where there was less light to look at them.  When we turned off our flashlights we were awestruck at the number and clarity of the stars.  We could just make out the Milky Way.  I wish I had a camera which could have captured this.  I tried putting the GoPro on time lapse pictures, but all I got was 976 pictures that looked like this:

Looks kinda like a big black rectangle, huh

 

As we were getting ready for bed, I heard the muffled conversation of Greg with someone outside the van.  Apparently, a van with 2 girls had pulled into the campground without a reservation hoping to get a site.  Well, the campground has been booked up for months.  They asked if they could park on our site and said they'd be gone early in the morning.  They even offered to pay us.  Greg, said no to bother and it was fine.  The girls had pulled out in the morning before any of us even woke up.  I figured this was karma for a time we had to share a campsite with another family many years ago.

That night we bundled up big time because it was the coldest night yet.  We think it dropped down into the lower 30's.  Jen wore five layers on top:  a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, fleece jacket, hooded sweatshirt, and a windbreaker/rain jacket.  She had on two pairs of socks, sweatpants and a pair of Shane's pants below the waist.  

"I still woke up during the night freezing."

                                                                    -Jen 

The next day we will head to Lake Powell to see Antelope Canyon and Rainbow Bridge.

~Shane