THE GRAND CANYON and ENVIRONS

Breakfast as usual, and then we headed into Williams for gas. What a nice surprise! This is an old fashioned Western town all dolled up for tourists…and it looks like fun!

 We hunted down the cheapest gas ($2.89/gal regular 87 octane) and then headed back.  As you most people know, I LOVE bears, and just outside of town is an attraction called BEARIZONA!  Do you think I could pass that up? Chick is quite indulgent of my love of bears, so we paid the somewhat high entrance fees and spent the next 2+ hours having a great time.

In reality it is a zoo with a walking section where you can mingle with the smaller animals native to this part of the country, and a driving section where you can drive through sections containing the larger animals of the southwest. Of course there were bears in both sections…tiny cubs through teenage in the walking section, and large, lumbering (beautiful) full grown black bears in the drive through section.

Our journey through the walking section started with a short stage presentation of raptors—in this case owls and hawks.  These beautiful birds were trained to fly from the stage, over the heads of the seated audience to food perches in the rear, and return again to the food perches on the stage, while the naturalist described the life style of each bird.  One flew within two inches of Chick’s head.  They are truly beautiful. They were horned owl, Asian eagle owl and Haris Hawk. Some skunk and guinea pigs were used as distractions. 

Once we finished BEARIZONA (it turned out to be worth the entrance fee to us !) we discovered we were ready for lunch.  Grand Canyon village was 40 miles away, so we headed back into Williams to get lunch.  After strolling up and down the street we picked a nice café and split a Reuben Sandwich.

After lunch we headed into the Grand Canyon National Park and instead of going right to the heart of tourism, the Village, we headed east and took a 3 mile walk out to Yaki Point overlooking a more eastern portion of the Canyon.  I had read of this particular overlook in Arizona Highways at the Rozaks and it had said it was little frequented, hence my choice to go.  Since the article was written they have added shuttle service to it, so more folks may go there, but even at that only about a half dozen at a time showed up.  It was a nice quiet way to enjoy the majesty of the canyon.

We then journeyed a bit further east to Grandview Point. This is automobile accessible, so there was a steady flow of people, but the spectacular view just goes on being spectacular no matter how many people are standing around.

By then afternoon was waning, so we decided to head into the village to park the car at El Tovar Hotel where we had dinner reservations.  I call this our “Anniversary Dinner” even though our anniversary was last month, because in 1999 when we were here FOR our Anniversary, we had dinner in El Tovar but it was snowing so hard you could not see the canyon.  Tonight it was clear and we could see the canyon through big windows from our table.

After finding a parking place, we wandered through the Visitor Center adjacent to the hotel and picked up a couple of books.  The El Tovar was built in 1905 by the Santa Fe Railroad and is a beautiful, old, elegant hotel.  It is in the process of getting a new roof, but other than that it had that wonderful look of ancient permanence such old, rustic but majestic hotels in our National Parks have. It has a similar feel to the original hotel at Old Faithful at Yellowstone.

EL TOVAR FRONT ENTRANCE

EL TOVAR CANYON SIDE ENTRANCE

EL TOVAR LOBBY

Cocktails in the lounge followed by dinner completed a wonderful day.

EL TOVAR BAR

VIEW FROM TABLE IN DINING ROOM

EL TOVAR DINING ROOM

The only slight hiccup was in trying to find our way out of a single lane, poorly marked route through the park in the PITCH BLACK.  No street lights, neon signs, car lights, etc.   By 9pm even the bears were asleep!

Nevertheless, after a couple of false starts we found the highway and headed for home.  We were tired and dirty, so we each took a shower, Chick set up the coffee, and we hit the sack.  I awoke early this morning and decided to write this while I could still remember it all.  My brain doesn’t seem to store memories very well and I didn’t want to lose this one.

By the way the last two nights it has been 42 and 36 degrees respectively here at 7000 feet.  This after just leaving Phoenix with its 100+ degree days and 80 degree nights!  Give me the mountains anytime.