During a conversation that was held the night before, the ladies chose to stay with Owen and Henry at the Lodge. Miria has been to the Canyon a few times and Hoa had some motion sickness problems coming through the Zion. The Parthenon looked exactly the same on the second cruise as it did on the first, and on the first I spent the first 36 hours puking my guts out, so I certainly understood their views. Instead of spending the entire day there, we would just check out the view from two or three vantage points along the canyon. We’d all have lunch at the lodge and then go swimming in Lake Powell at a beach near Page, Az.
Something I didn’t mention about the “austere” accomidations at Marble Canyon Lodge was the coffee makers and the t.v. set; it doesn’t have any of either. There is a t.v. set, but they had the same program on each channel and I live that show up here, so I turned it off. The coffee can be had at the gas station which doesn’t open until 7, but it’s worth the wait.
After parousing the planter box for rattlesnakes and lizards, I sipped on the coffee and watched the sun gain strength against the red wall behind the place. It was really nice to watch my kids get their kids ready for the day and for some, the trip too. Many times I remember herding kids around and getting the vehicle ready for the onslaught of the next generation. This time I sat, (well out of the way) drank my coffee and watched for wayward children and rattlesnakes.
We followed Hwy 89 with the vermilion cliffs on one side and the ‘res’ as they call it, on the other. The ‘res’ is the Navajo Reservation and along there, it seemed to be divvied up into multi-acre plots for the homes. The homes varied from 21st Century Ranch’s, to 10th Century Kiva’s, and everything in between. I’m assuming they were kiva’s anyway. They were either multi-sided ( All of the buildings are well off the road, and doing 70mph didn’t help) or round and all built of either adobe or natural stone. They had one small entrance and no window’s that I could detect, but they looked to be dark and cool inside. Some of them had power lines leading in but more often they didn’t and some even had solar panels to gather electricity. Often as not, there would be one to two bovines of various breeds, walking through sage brush trying to find something to eat.
There was always fences lining the roads and I didn’t see any carcass’ alongside until the next day when we were almost to the Zion again. Every 20 miles or so, there would be road side stands of various contruction methods ranging from dead limbs for walls to sun bleached planking. We stopped at one and they make the most beautiful jewelry from Silver and a variety of locally mined stones. This is where it comes in handy to dress as an everyday local dude who’s out for the day, rather than a model for Gentlemens’ Quarterly. There aren’t any prices on a lot of the items and it seemed only one person of the group knew what they were. If you’re up for bargining, this would probably be the place to do it, and you can do that regardless of what you’re wearing.
I remember thinking at the time of Frank Herbert and his Dune series; of the Museum Freemen eeking out an exsistance under the oppressive regime of the God Emperor. I subconciously opened the window to catch a wiff of burned flint, or maybe some cinnamon, but all I smelled was Owen’s vomit. Poor Owen, he’s geneticaly doomed to motion sickness, just as his dad and his granddad were. It did provide us with the opportunity to get out and take some pictures.
There was one stretch of road where the landscape seemed to have melted. Before and after this area, the rock formations looked as though water had never touched them, but here it rained like hell?
At Cameron, Az, we turned right onto 64 which took us to the entrance of the Grand Canyon National Park. On our right, it was as flat as a pancake and our left a thousand foot cliff that we would eventually have to climb.
We kept getting glimps of a gorge on our right and we eventually stopped at a “scenic overlook”. The first thing I did when I opened the door was look at the ground. If there was ever a great place for a rattle snake to inhabit, this joint was it.
Cactus and boulders strewn everywhere but a wide and clear path down around a mound leading us to the point. Once we saw where we were going, we grabbed up the kids and carried them the rest of the way.
The river at the bottom of this canyon is the Little Colorado which eventually runs into the Colorado.
The entrance fee to the Park is the same as Zion: $25.00 per passenger vehicle. Not very far from the entry port, we came to Desert View to have our first look. I had sent Mark ahead when we first got there because I wasn’t all that impressed with the name. After all, I’d been looking at the desert ever since we left the Lodge, but I was quite pleased with what we saw.
If this little guy only knew how tastey he was he wouldn’t be sitting at my feet.
We’d moved down to the next observation point (Navajo point) to take a couple more pictures. You can see the observation tower at the Desert View on the right.
I’d show you more pictures of the trip back, but except for this one they hadn’t changed any.
Wow! The shots are absolutely gorgeous.
And what a great family.
By the way, I was never mistaken for a GQ model.