North Rim

Today was suppose to be rainy and we woke up to bright sunshine. Off we went toward the North Rim. Our normal routine is to go to the furthest point first. Today we headed off the Cape Royal, per Mike from the visitor center. Wild 20-25 miles, probably the average speed was 20 mph, curve after curve but so worth it.

The North Rim is 1000’ higher than the South Rim so there are totally different views and weather. The interesting info is the water for the South Rim comes from the North Rim via a pipe and all by gravity. This sounds great but the North Rim is into major water conservation. We don’t understand any of this.

After we visited Cape Royal we went on the Port Imperial, all part of the same road system, well off the beaten path. Traffic was very light so we were happy.

There are probably duplicate pictures in this set. Hard to keep track of when loading.

That is the Colorado, 8000' below us

Then on to Bright Angel Lodge, this is the tourist stopping location. We couldn’t even find a parking place!! We have no idea where all these people came from. The North Rim is quite a distance from anything and there are very limited facilities. But they showed up. We decided to come back tomorrow.

Along the road, near the Kaibad trail, there were many, many cars. Everyone is out hiking today, The weather is great in the 40-50s. Sunshine. Kaibad is the major trail in the Grand Canyon. It is the trail that goes from the North Rim to the South Rim and takes 2-3 days to complete. There is a shuttle that runs the hikers between the 2 rims. I don;t think all these people were going rim-to-rim, just out for a day hike.

Next Day

We drove to the North Rim today in the early morning. Parking was much better and we found a spot easily. The only problem was it was cloudy and the clouds were blowing around in the Canyon. We were actually above the clouds, neat………….There is rim trail that we took near the lodge but the clouds were a bit of a problem. Felt like we were Angels looking down on the clouds.

Tomorrow all the campgrounds are closing so we need to move on. We plan to do an overnight or 2 in Page then head toward Flagstaff and Phoenix. All dependent on the weather.

We come away from this trip with more items added to our bucket list than  when we started. Coming back to Page and then several parks in the area is high on the list.

We will be going back to Page from here and hope for good weather as we have several short trips around Page we want to take.