Current Location: Flagstaff, AZ, N 35 13.056', W 111 35.640', elev. 6822 ft.

Friday morning I woke up and drove south on US 89. Part of the trip was through the Navajo Nation reservation, and there were a few roadside stands selling jewelry, pottery and other Indian crafts. I got down to the other end of US 89A and took that west through desert and rocks, crossing the Colorado river, and then driving up onto the Kaibab Plateau, the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Driving up there, I popped a Bob Dylan CD into my stereo, because something just felt right about listening to Dylan while driving through the desert and up to the plateau.

Upon reaching Arizona 67, I drove south into Grand Canyon National Park (North). The surprising thing driving into the canyon from the north side, is you pass through miles and miles of the Kaibab National Forest. It was very strange to see forest in Arizona, especially after being surrounded by barren desert and rock lands the previous few days.

As I was driving through the forest, I remembered that as of tomorrow, I have no medical insurance, and no chance to sign up for COBRA, as tomorrow is the three month anniversary of my last day of work. I have no medical, dental, or vision insurance, no life insurance, no insurance on any of my items in storage, or any items in my vehicle (includes laptop, camera, etc.). In fact, the only insured item I have is my car. It feels strangely liberating. Plus, who likes insurance anyway? Insurance companies are like opening presents on Christmas day. Only the presents are all bags full of weasels, and you get a bill two weeks later for upkeep of the bags and the security of the weasels. Of course, I'm probably jinxing myself by writing this, but I've had pretty good luck so far. I also forgot to mention this, but I went over 20,000 miles for the trip when I was driving from Denver to Crested Butte with Keith.

Anyway, back to the Grand Canyon. Driving in was amazing, seeing forests, trees, and large open meadows, probably with lots of wildlife. The temperature was nice and cool, high 60's, a very refreshing break from the heat of the Utah and Arizona deserts. I got to the canyon itself and... its impressive. Its huge, its massive, its 10 miles across. And I was only seeing a small section of the canyon, it extends 280 miles to Nevada. Impressive as it was, grand as it was, it didn't strike me as being extremely beautiful. Please don't get the wrong impression, I'm not downplaying the effect of seeing the canyon at all, it really was beautiful, but my personal opinion is that Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park were prettier to look at and photograph. That didn't stop me from taking hundreds of shots of the canyon. The sheer size of it was overwhelming.



On the north side, I met a lot of people. I'm not sure what it is, but in the national parks, people are friendly, virtually everyone says hello and wants to have a conversation. I met a family from Manhattan who saw my Connecticut license plate and struck up a conversation, and later on, I saw some New Jersey plates and struck up a conversation with a couple, though I found out the car was only a rental, they were actually from St. Louis, but had been in most of the same places in the past week as me. The north side was not very crowded at all, there were actually very few people, probably because the north side is pretty far from anywhere.



Getting near dark, I didn't stick around for the sunset, because I wanted to take a few photos of the forest on the way out of the park. Plus, I was planning on going to the south rim the next day, and it is a very long drive. Even though it is only 10 miles across the canyon, it is 225 miles to the south rim by car.



By the time I got out to the heavy forest area it was getting dark, but I saw a critter up in the road and slowed to find out what it was. It was a porcupine! The first time I have ever seen one of those in the wild, so I tried to get a few photos. Since I have never seen one, I actually got out of my car, and probably made a great site running across the street and following the porcupine, happily chasing it through the mountain meadow for a photo.



Bad photos of porcupines

I left the park pretty much the way I had come in, Arizona 67 to US 89A, to US 89 which I took south to Flagstaff, Arizona and stopped for the night. On saturday, I drove back north on US 89 until I reached Arizona 64 which headed west to the park. This was all through Navajo land, so it was nice to see during the day. In fact, there were a lot more Navajo boutiques on this side of the canyon, though I didn't stop at any. Arizona 64 takes you through the south rim of the canyon, and about 25 miles worth of the park road. I immediately found that the south side of the Grand Canyon (N 36 02.311', W 111 50.234', elev. 7435 ft.) is not as nice as the northern side. Not that its bad, just not as nice. For one thing, you are at a lower altitude, (about 9000 ft for the northern rim, about 8000 ft for the lower rim). This causes hotter weather, which causes less trees to grow, which causes less shade which causes hotter weather. Additionally, the south side is a lot more accessible, there are more airports, and Flagstaff, Phoenix, and even Las Vegas are relatively closer to the south side. More accessibility means a lot more tourists, which also makes the south side less nice.

I still took a lot of photos, and in general, spent more time on the south rim than I had on the north rim.



Desert View Tower



I noticed that a vast amount of the tourists were European. While I don't have a problem with Europeans in general, the ones I saw that day all seemed to be very rude. They didn't seem to care if they were in your way, (whether you were taking a photo or simply walking), they didn't seem to have a sense of awe about what they were seeing and to be honest, they seemed to have an overdeveloped, overactive sense of entitlement. Yes even 500 years after the discoverer-conqueror-colonizer phase, Europeans seem to think everything is theirs and have a ho-hum attitude about it. The least they could do when coming to this country is be awed by the Grand Canyon rather than have their pompous, Avant Garde attitude. They don't have to like the inhabitants, the politics, etc, but at least enjoy the Grand Canyon, something completely natural and something completely breathtaking. I came to one canyon overlook, called Grandview point, and when I first walked out to the overlook, there were very few people, but within minutes, I was overwhelmed by a throng of Europeans, and didn't see one American in the crowd. The Europeans with their loud chatter, yelling, screaming kids and other touristy behavior really ruined the overlook for me. I ended up taking photos of them, rather than the canyon.



They all just seem to be standing around, not really enjoying the view

You can view the rest of the photos here. Anyway, I got out of there pretty quickly, took a few more photos at various other view points, and went to the general store and giftshop in the main Grand Canyon village in search of one or two gift items I had in mind. I didn't really find what I was looking for in the gift shops, which meant I had to go back to the Navajo shops on the side of the road leading up to the canyon, rather than heading directly south on Arizona 64 to Flagstaff (because the Navajo lands are only on the eastern side of the canyon). So I drove back east on Arizona 64, backtracking on everything I'd seen, until I departed the canyon where I started coming to the roadside stands. I stopped at most, picking up a few items, purchasing a few trinkets to give out as gifts, and actually shrewdly haggling for the first time in my life, because the marked prices were a little higher than I had assumed. I stopped at several places and all the merchants were friendly and most wanted to talk, especially about where I was from and why I was in Arizona with Connecticut plates. I love chatting up with people, telling them about what I am doing. Can you imagine, me? Me loving to talk all about himself over and over? :) That is sarcastic, since its pretty obvious I am narcissistic and love to hear myself and love having this outlet to do it. And its quite possible that the Navajo I talked to were thinking of me what I had been thinking about the Europeans earlier. Anyway, it was pretty late, and it was dark by the time I made it back to Flagstaff, but I was able to take a few sunset photos on the Navajo nation.