Monument Valley Sunrise

What a difference 4 thousand feet makes in your sleep patterns.  The Grand Canyon North Rim was a bit over 8 thousand feet above sea level.  Now, we are back at 4,000 about the same as Sedona.  Fortunately, Jan woke up just before sunrise which allowed me to take this series of special shots.

All taken from the balcony at The View hotel inside the park.

Last Day at the Grand Canyon. First Day at Monument Valley

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset last night before saying goodbye to the Grand Canyon.  We spend most of the day on the road to Monument Valley.

Here's the Sunset:

You can see how the light changes the colors of the canyon as the sun sets.  And the sky...

Monument Valley is owned by the Navajo Nation.  They regard it as their national park.  Since the last time we visited the Nation built their own hotel into the landscape of the park.  It's called "The View" and anyone who stays has a balcony facing "The Mittens."  Here's what we can see just from our balcony.

It's gray tonight but tomorrow will be sunny.  I don't know if the clouds will produce any rainfall in the park.  I hope so.  It keeps the red dust down.  We are going for a sunset tour through the iconic formations Thursday night.  Many westerns were filmed here.  For science fiction fans, parts of Back to the Future III were done here too.

Nature Hiking

We enjoy guided hikes with the Park Rangers.  This morning the topic was “nature” which provided plenty of opportunity to discuss just about anything.  A good chunk of the discussion centered around the California Condor.  Many of the small population (they are endangered) summer at Bryce Canyon.  Perhaps we will see one there because we haven’t seen one here.

This variety of pine tree produces pine nuts.  If your Thanksgiving stuffing recipe calls for some of those (and ours does) then these types of trees will do the trick.

At 8,000 feet above sea level vegetation adapts.  These alpine like flowers are fairly common along the North Rim.

This rather unusual looking plant is an not a cactus.  It’s in the Yucca family.  It blooms once in its life (which can be 100 years) and then dies.  

I don’t know if the gray clouds plan on staying elsewhere, but there are blue skies right now.  We took advantage of the weather by hiking the Transcept trail which runs along the ridge of the Transcept canyon.  I loops out from the North Rim Lodge to the campgrounds about 1 ½ miles away.  Then we took another trail back to the lodge.  We put about 4 miles on our feet.  Then we parked ourselves in the rocking chairs on our porch and ate lunch.  VACATION!

Sunrise on the North Rim

Sunrise is nominally 5:25 AM.  Because of rock out cropping it usually happens just a bit later.  Our cabin sits on a trail which leads to the entrance of Bright Angel Point.  That is not the same trail as the famous one on the South Rim, but they both stare into Bright Angel Canyon.

There is still a cloud layer rolling through.  The area where I photographed a roaring fire on Monday shows little evidence of one this morning after the heavy rain we received in the evening.  There are still hot spots I am sure.  One park service representative said the fire probably won’t be completely extinguished until the snow falls.  That is typical for large fires.

Sunrise and sunset bring out the various colors of the canyon, most of which are the result of iron in the rock.  As the Park Ranger told us during a geology presentation, “rocks rust.”

I wasn’t the only one with camera gear on the point this morning.  However, there was a young couple posing for wedding pictures.  You won’t get to see that because they were working with someone and I didn’t want to distract them.  Sunrise only lasts so long.  Let’s hope the magic of the morning brings them happiness.

The North Rim Day 1

It doesn’t rain in this area very often during the summer, but it is raining today.  I imagine the firefighters who are working the North Rim are happy.  The fire was started by lightning so the protocol is to let it burn without getting out of control and without threatening life and property.  The floor of the forest will develop “chuff” over time.  That’s an assortment of debris, small vegetation, brush and assorted twigs and limbs.  If every fire were extinguished the chuff can become an enormous hazard since it becomes fuel to create even bigger fires.  Also, when forests grow to thick with trees they promote rapid, out of control fires.  Periodic controlled burning is part of the way forests are now managed.

The fires are not close to where we are or where we will explore.  Some of the back country trails are closed.  Our cabin sits near the rim.  It’s about 150 yards away.  There is nothing between our porch and the rim except trees.  The skies are supposed to clear overnight so we are looking forward to sunrise and plan to join a Park Ranger on a nature walk at 8 AM.

Most of the guests are respectful and appreciative of what a resource this is.  There are some who enjoy flirting with danger by climbing or walking into areas that are not safe.  There were campers here from New York State.  Nice camp!!!  Not enough adult supervision.  They were scaling cliffs in order to take more interesting pictures of each other.  I am not whining about young people.  They should enjoy their moments, but if one of them falls into the canyon I doubt their parents will think too highly of that camp.

One surprise on the way into the park this morning.  There are Bison here.  I do not know if they found there way here somehow or if an initiative to re-introduce them into the park is underway.  For the benefit of Laura Santacrose I took a picture of a calf nestled against her mom.  It’s a long lens picture,  I was not close to the herd and it would be profoundly stupid to get near a calf with a mom nearby.  There is not as much traffic on the North Rim as the South Rim.  When we found the herd there was no enormous traffic jam.  Just two cars observing from a safe distance.

We are here for two days and then on to Monument Valley.

Sunset near Cliff Dweller

I created a way to compress the photos to fit into the available bandwidth.  Also, as the sun sets, the signal gets better.  So here are a couple of pictures from our vantage point.

Cliff Dwellers, Arizona

We are quartered at the Cliff Dwellers Lodge, adjacent to the Cliff Dwellers restaurant.  We left Sedona and drove here, which is about 90 minutes from the entrance to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  That's our next stop on the vacation.

There is enough of a mobile phone signal to post and move text.  No pics.  The room is comfortable, basic and constructed the same year Jan was born.

We can see the fires that are burning on the North Rim from our front window.  About 11,000 acres are involved.  Since it was created by lightning the Park Service works to contain the fire so that it doesn't threaten properties, but allows it to burn since fire is a part of the natural process of forest restoration.

Although this can be a staging location for entering the Grand Canyon, many of their clientele come here for chartered fishing trips on the Colorado, which the enterprise here also sells.  Their general store is somewhat thinly supplied.  You can buy beer and wine in addition to soda and water, but no real food.  That would tend to work against the restaurant.  No complaints.  Just a family making a living in a remote part of Arizona.

We see rain clouds and a few drops actually fell onto our windshield.  Literally.  I think it was 11 drops.