Desert View Watchtower

This morning I headed east to the far end of the Grand Canyon National Park. The focal point down here is the Desert View Watchtower built in 1932. It is a pretty cool building in a way cool location. Surprisingly I was the only person down there for most of my time on that site. I hung around while the sun came up and took some pictures of the light playing on the tower and of course a couple of shots of the canyon as well.

It is worth checking out the link above as the lady who designed this tower made it fit the site and most every rock in it was hand selected to fit her design, and 91 years later, it shows. I also jumped down to the Navajo Point canyon overlook but didn't find a shot there that made the cut today. It is hard to choose which photos from this place as I could make an whole book of shots that should be here and aren't.

The shot above is of the canyon as it cuts down into bedrock, the spot where you can see the Colorado River is called Hance Rapids and they are apparently the wildest rapids in the canyon, and can be challenging for rafters. One would think that the Colorado would be running quite clearly here below the Glen Canyon Dam at Page but apparently the Paria River which comes in from the north side carries a pretty big silt load and keeps it kind of muddy looking for most of the year. Someday I will manage to stop at Horseshoe Bend just out of Page and take a photo or two of the river while it is still running clear, but that will have to wait for another trip.

Now there I go, make a liar out of myself. The shot above is looking back up the Canyon wall from Navajo Point towards the Desert View Watchtower. I didn't head out this evening so no shots of what looked like a decent sunset. The road in here is pretty bad, rocking and rollin' for the first mile or so south of the Park highway, but I did talk to a group of Park's folks this morning on my way back in and apparently over the next few weeks they are going to be doing some work on it. Mostly to stop traffic from straying off the beaten track looking for a less rough ride. There was apparently 4 1/2 feet of snow on this trail last winter and the 4X4 folks tore it up pretty bad, and budgets being what they are it is low on the priority list, or so the story goes.