Grand Canyon (2 and 3 July)

July 03, 2018

The scene as we left Monument Valley just after dawn.

We visited this area in 2001 when we travelled from the south and Grand Canyon was the northern-most part of the trip. On reaching Tuba City we recalled having been here before when the roads were dilapidated and we felt unwilling to continue towards Monument Valley. This time the roads were in superb condition. The changes seemed greatest when we reached Highway 89 and arrived at the Cameron Trading post. In 2001 it was a single building on the side of the road. Now it is the size of a small mall, boasts a restaurant with 240 places, and the road has a roundabout to divert traffic west to the Grand Canyon or south to Flagstaff.

As we drove through reservation land we noticed numerous residential compounds, sometimes isolated, other times 400 to 600 meters from other compounds. Some had simple but modern houses, several outbuildings and numerous cars and pickup trucks in various states of disrepair. In some cases there are no houses but old caravans, 5^th wheelers or shacks made of plywood and/or iron. In some cases we could see a single tall building about a meter square – an outhouse.

The drive continued to take us through canyons, over plateaus as before. We saw what we thought were a couple of industrial kilns but as we got closer we realised that they were natural features. It’s a strange land with strange and unpredictable geology.

After turning towards Grand Canyon we saw a small turn-off to the Little Colorado River Gorge, a Navajo Tribal Park enterprise. It is smaller and much narrower than the Grand Canyon. Entrance was a donation and the tribe has used this revenue to create a vehicle park with safety rails and toilets. They even put up helpful signs.

The Grand Canyon has changed since were here 17 years ago. The roads are much improved and there are more facilities of all types: accommodation, food outlets and restaurants, and shops in general. There is a modern visitor centre and three free shuttle buses which are intended to reduce traffic. The idea is to arrive and park and then get about on the shuttle buses. Something else we appreciated is that the national park part of the Grand Canyon is a no-fly zone. This is partly to allow the Californian Condor to get established (it has grown from just 15 survivors to several hundred now) and also so that the visitor experience isn’t compromised by the noise from planes and helicopter or the intrusiveness of drones. Incidentally, we haven’t seen a single drone since leaving New Zealand – that’s got to be a plus.

After messing about in the visitor centre and looking at what could be seen there we took the shuttle to a transfer point where we got on another shuttle to go further down the canyon. We got off at Maricopa Point and walked past a couple of other shuttle stops until Mohave Point where we succumbed to the comfort and air-conditioning of another shuttle. At one stage we discovered an abandoned uranium mine. Uranium was discovered in the 1950s and mining continued until 1969 when it was shut down by the federal government. They have dismantled all the visible structures but are still working on the decontamination. One fellow who hikes all over the canyon told us that uranium has entered some of the ground water.

We enjoyed seeing the canyon. Although it was a bit hazy from several forest fires in Utah and Arizona, it seemed clearer than when we visited earlier in 2001. It got clearer in the afternoon when a wind came up. It is beautiful but its main attraction is its size. It’s hard to understand the attitudes of some of the original Europeans in the area who described it as waste land.