Desert Oasis: the Grand Canyon

 

About two weeks ago my mom flew into town and spent 10 days hanging out with my dad & I in Utah. It was really great to be able to show my parents around the places I live, work, and recreate and they got to spend more time with Reuben and the cats , both rare occurrences. The second weekend my mom was here we really went all out and saw two of the most spectacular places in the states: the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas!  It was a hot, HOT weekend in the desert southwest and both of these sites provided us a little refuge from the 110, 114, & 118 degree days.

The Big Ditch

The drive down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was amazing and I had been really excited to check out the scenery between here and there. You exit the Interstate at Toquerville and head to the town of Hurricane where you follow Hwy 59 through Apple Valley and into northern Arizona at the FLDS towns of Hildale and Colorado City. For those of you not up-to-date on Mormonism, these towns are strongholds for the polygamist offshoots of Mormonism known as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) where Warren Jeffs, "the Prophet" and a huge controversial scandal took place in recent history. Read this short National Geographic article of the FLDS...very, very interesting and has some excellent photography (Nat. Geo. FLDS Article). The towns certainly had a strange air to them as we passed through, they were not inviting or welcoming and had no gas stations or tacky gift shops, all of the houses where built by hand, and we saw a person riding down the road on a horse.
 
Next on the highway was Pipe Springs National Monument which apparently houses a historical "hide-out" for sister wives and children of the polygamist families in CC and beyond that you hit Fredonia which is just some houses, maybe a gas station, and a tacky gift shop. From there you head directly south and climb up the Kaibab Plateau which takes you higher and higher into Ponderosa and Aspen forests with open meadows and views. Eventually, Hwy 67 takes you to the very end of the plateau and at the end is the great expanse of canyons built by the Colorado River.  The North Rim has a relaxed, laid back feel and is not as overwhelmed with tourists as I imagine the South Rim would be where 80% of tourists are concentrated. There were adorable CCC-style cabins everywhere and the views were spectacular. I have never made it all the way to the Grand Canyon before because unless you have 2 weeks to hike the river, there really isn't much to do but look. But the looking is about as expansive and striking as any you will ever see and I imagine that in sunset or sunrise it would be gorgeous.

My favorite thing at the North Rim was the beautiful, historic Grand Canyon Lodge built by CCC crews in the 1930s. It was so big and classic looking and perfectly perched right on the rim of the G.C. We had a yummy lunch in the lodge restaurant and spent the day walking around the different viewpoints branching out from the structure. It is amazing to think about some of the first people who laid eyes on the massive hole in the earth or at least all of the people who saw it before they had already scoped it out on Google. Even after seeing it ahead of time in pictures, though, there is nothing like seeing one of the wonders of the world in person and enjoying it with my family was a special way to commemorate such an epic National Park tour!

 
 
~Mary Lane~
Toquerville, UT
7.8.13