Last full day at the Big Ditch

We came, we saw, now we are wentin', well, tomorrow we will be moving on anyway. I have taken a bunch of pictures and hit most of the spots on my list that I wanted to here on the South Rim. There are a couple that only have access by Shuttle Bus and I never got near them, to many people I expect. It is probably a lot like Lake Louise or Moraine Lake back home, shoulder to shoulder folks all looking for a unique picture, and I don't deal well with crowds anymore. This morning I just ran up to a roadside pullout that has an iconic rock formation, they call "Duck on a Rock" for obvious reasons, it does kind of have a rubber ducky type of vibe to it.

Although I could see the rubber ducky in my minds eye the pic above, Ducks on a Rock, is for those of my readers who don't have as good an imagination or maybe a need to try out this new AI in the photo world. Here is the real shot.

This afternoon I ran back over to the Grandview Point, just to see what the Canyon looked like from that vantage point in the late afternoon before sunset. I have found sunrise to be a lot more calm and almost zen like, the crowds are not up and at it that early in the morning except for those most popular and accessible sites like Mather Point and Yavapai. In fact some mornings there have been only one or two others out there before the sunrise. There were a couple of nice vista's one straight across the valley and the second back to the eastern end of the Grand Canyon, capturing the meanderings of the Colorado River and for the eagle eyes a shot of the Desert View Watchtower in the far off distance.

One thing I have noticed is that most of the folks out picturin' these views are using their iPhones and a few years back I would have wondered why bother, but the newest models do a great job of capturing images and are even pretty easy to post-process and send back to those not so lucky as to be there with you. The shot below was back at the camp via my phone and Starlink well before I even packed up my real camera's and headed home.

Another Grand Day at the Canyon

They are never just another day at the Grand Canyon, the scenery is spectacular and the weather is cooling off a little here. We are thinking about pulling up stakes in a day or two and heading down the road again. Our welcome and our permit run out here on Thursday at Sunset so we are thinking we will find a spot over on the Markham Pass road to hang out for a few days then.

This morning I ran over to the Grandview Point to see what I could stir up for a sunrise shot. There haven't been a lot of clouds in the sky here the last few days so the Canyon and the colours down in there have been taking the big part of the picturin' load. There are only a couple of viewpoints that I haven't haunted over the last 4 or 5 days either for sunrise or sunset, or maybe just a mid-day visit.

This evening I went back to the East to Moran Point and got a little more cloud action there. Other than the usual picturin' I spent an hour or so overhauling my Braid Nailer so that I can refasten some trim pieces that have decided they needed to come loose on the rough road into our present location. I have ony drive about 50 nails with it but it seems to need a good lubricating and all I had was a little WD40 silicone spray and some engine oil so that is what she got. It is working better, not perfect, but at least it is driving the odd nail now.

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.

Sunday at the Grand Canyon

Weekends at the Grand Canyon are busy times, especially when you have almost perfect weather to boot. Everywhere we went today there was an over abundance of people. Over at Mather Point this morning it was standing room only for the sunrise. Interestingly enough the folks with real type cameras were almost to a person facing away from the actual sunrise trying I guess to catch the morning light on the canyon, while the iphonographers were all facing towards the sun, holding their phones over their heads, almost as if they were beseeching RA, the sun god, to bestow his blessings on them. Hope it worked.

I took the shot above as I was leaving the point and I would say at least half if not more of the folks had already left.

Mather Point Canyon views

Brenda and I went over to the Yavapai viewpoint at midday and once again there were a bunch of folks wandering along the Rim trail there, but gladly none of them were hanging over the edge getting in the way.

Tonight I went back to Moran Point, where I was yesterday morning for the sunrise to see what happens there at Sunset. The crowd followed me, or I followed them, not sure, and here there were a couple of guys desperately trying to become Instagram famous by scaling the rocks and leaning over the edge. I try to avoid having those folks in my shots, my own dislike of heights keeps my heart in my throat watching them so I soon go somewhere else to try to get something decent without their participation.

And that is all there was for today in the Canyon report.

Chillin' at the Big Ditch

Well we got settled in here at our new location just down the road from the Grandview Tower. The road in the park down to the Forestry boundary was a challenge, full of holes, rough, and lots of overhanging branches that necessitate a kind of bobbing and weaving to get this old Solitude in here that we didn't have to do with the much lower Living Quarters horse trailer that we were traveling in the last time we came in here. But if we had of had horses I would have been real tempted to unload them it was that rough. As it was I could see Brenda wincing everytime we rolled one way or the other, just thinking about what was happening to her cupboards back in the trailer. The weather is about perfect though, warm enough in the daytime that we could wear shorts and cools off quickly as the sun goes down, so we are not needing the AC, which when we are off grid is a good thing. Apparently our Starlink is working fine or maybe I am just sending these epistles off into the vast unknown to never be seen again. I was doing a little focus stacking around camp today and once I processed the shot below I was able to see something that I didn't actually see when I took the shots that comprised it. Sometimes the camera sees things the eye doesn't and this is probably where the rumours about Bigfoot started, although I didn't know he roamed this far south.

Today I got going early enough to wander about and watch the daylight come over the Canyon. Not a great sunrise, but the canyon itself is a epic place and watching the light play across the nooks and crannies of that was amazing. The spot I went to was not to crowded, one photographer there, a fellow, Les Wentworth, from Washington state. I am sure he got some nice shots and I know he shared some tips with me, as he took them. Other than that excursion, that I was back from before 9AM, I never left camp and Brenda spent the entire day chillin' around camp.

I am going to have to take more pictures as it appears the only way to have more than one paragraph in this old Blogger program anymore is to insert an image in between each blurb. Oh, and by the way Willie, I ran into Doug and Sue from Tunkwa along the road on the way into our camp this morning.

Grand Canyon Bound

Yesterday we headed out for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. All reports had it being in the mid 20's down there and that meant it was a great spot for boondocking. The drive from this spot at Kanab, through Page, to the Grandview Tower road where we had camped before is pretty cool. Lots of red mountains, interspersed by some desert for variety. We didn't linger along the way though as we were destined for a spot where we could just sit and chill for a few days. For all of you Albertans back home you can rest assured that with the Conservatives in power there, you are enjoying the lowest diesel prices we have seen, barring a 1 cent difference, for our entire journey. That is of course with all the conversions from Metric to Imperial, well actually the US gallon, which is a little gallon, and the difference in currencies taken into account.

We pulled into the Grand Canyon National Park, paid our $35 and headed for the Grandview Tower road where we lurched and bumped our way south a couple of miles till we crossed into the Kaibab Forest, where camping is allowed, in this spot anyhow. That couple of miles was bad, really bad though so I took a spin south on the Forest Road and came out 16 miles later at Tusayan, a long drive on a marginally better road though. Not sure exactly how we will get out of here, but that is a worry for another time. For the next few days I am hoping to be able to do a little picturin' along the South Rim here, so we will see what we get.

The Jello was Shaken Today......again!

We were heading towards Poverty Flats down Overton, Nevada way to chill for a few days, but chilling wasn’t on the menu down in that neck of the woods, it was going to be in the mid 90’s over there so we made a change in plans and detoured down to Kanab, Utah and the Grand Plateau RV Park for tonight. It is only in the 80’s here and with full hookups we can run the air so these Northerners will survive. Tomorrow we are planning on heading around to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, to a little spot we took our horses to about 8 or so years ago. The weather is supposed to be in the mid to high 70’s, high 20’s for you Canadians, so that will be great weather for a little boondocking and chillin’.

The place we are at tonight is a nice spot under some pretty nice red rocks.

Where Did They Go?

So when I last wrote a blog we were still in Jamaica celebrating Lacey and Clayton's marriage, and now that they are old married folks it is probably time for me to get this journal updated. We did manage to get out of Jamaica, but I had a tough time explaining to the US Customs and Border agent why my passport wasn't stamped each and every time I had been in and out of the States over the last year. She told me I needed it stamped and I told her that I made it a practice not to tell Border Crossing folks how to do their job and that policy has served me well over the last 60 odd years of crossing the Medicine Line. Usually when you fly you get a stamp, but as I drive, can't fit the horses on a plane, you don't usually get a stamp. They just scan your passport and we all have heard how the computers are working now and they are keeping track of our movements much better. Well, maybe you guys, but apparently not me. I finally convinced the nice lady that I had no intention of becoming an illegal alien and had kept a good record of my comings and goings just in case the government needed them and she let me on through.

The last year has been an interesting experiment, what with Brenda's knee replacement not going so well, but we have discovered one, maybe the only, benefit of her plight. When we travel we usually get a wheelchair to get from the check-in to the gate and back. Most airlines also supply a driver for that conveyance. And those folks know how to get around those big places in a hurry. It means no waiting at the Security Check and priority boarding. Big benefit entering Jamaica, our lady driver knew the ropes and we were through Immigration and Customs quicker than you can blink. And coming back out of Montego Bay there was at least a thousand people in the line and we scooted right to the front. And nobody even gives a lady in a wheelchair and her bodyguard a second look.

It was an interesting winter from a horsepersons point of view. Arizona had an early outbreak of a critter disease called Vesticular Stomatitis which meant all our horses were going to have to be out of Arizona for 21 days before they were allowed to cross the border back into Canada. So we made a plan to wander our way home slowly after sprinting for the Arizona/Utah border to get the clock ticking.

As it turned out the outbreak took a break and the Canadian government allowed horses that had not been in the county in southern Arizona with the problem to head for home without the 21 day condition. But we had some plans made and decided at least part of them needed to be acted on.

Hard to believe but in all the miles we have driven around the United States and the many years we have been to Arizona, we had never gotten to see the Grand Canyon, except from 35,000 feet as we flew by it. This time we combined it with a trip to Dave and Linda Modahl's ranch in Northern Arizona.

Ben and Beauty were enthralled by Dave and Linda's gate guards

Ken enjoys the riding and seeing new country.

Ken, Verna, Linda, Dave and Penny in the foreground

Not sure what kind of snake that is but it is a sign that we are not far enough north.

 After enjoying Dave and Linda's "Lazy D Ranch" for four days we headed for the big ditch.

Words really can not describe this place, it is truly a wondrous place, and I will let the pictures do the talking.

 Through the wonders of the internet we knew folks who knew folks who had scouted out a site we could camp with our horses and and still be within riding distance of the Canyon.

Ken, Verna and Penny

Blue and I, Blue was happy the Canyon was behind us and not ahead on the trail.

Ken and Beauty

We finally made it

You can see the bridge across the Colorado down there.

At the bottom of the photo is a roof at Phantom Ranch a way station on the ride across the canyon

This fellow was looking at me like, "I ain't hauling your big ass down into Canyon, not to mention back up"

It was a great place and we will be back. But once I got done riding over and having another look down from horseback Brenda and I loaded up and headed north. The next night we were in Dillon, Montana and heading for the border the next day. All our worry over the border crossing was for naught, the fellow just took copies our horse papers and sent us on our way. Not much excitement there but a little farther along in our journey our Pressure Pro sent us a message telling us that things were going to get a little more exciting if we didn't find a tire shop pronto. As luck would have it we were a block from a great little tire shop in Nanton and they quickly pulled off the flat and put the spare on for us. They checked out the tire and discovered that the wheel had a crack in it. After talking to my tire expert and favourite tire selling cousin I decided to change all the wheels on the trailer from the cast aluminum mags to plain jane, but strong, steel. While we were at it we also switched the tires to a set of Goodyear G114's.

Since we got back here down the road from Dogpound we have been to a couple of birthday parties and visited a few folks but have been sticking pretty close to the ranch otherwise.

I always tell folks that wondering what to do to keep busy is a non-issue if you have a farm and Brenda and I have been busy cleaning up after our early snow last September, fixing a water leak in our outside system that developed over the winter and general yard maintenance, including replacing our crumbling retaining wall. Just another century or two and we'll have that "to do" list whipped.

Now in a blast of information you are caught up and maybe, just maybe I can keep a little more abreast of things in the future.