Meador Manor

TRIP DATE: June 12, 2017 | SLIDESHOW | PHOTO ALBUM

Most of our party slept in the next day to recover from two long travel days, although John was up early. We had breakfast in the same Canyon Room restaurant we had dined in the previous evening. Then all four of us hopped into my car. We knew parking was limited at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, so carpooling made sense, and that also meant we only needed to buy one car pass into the national park.

Our first stop, however, was the National Geographic Imax theater. I remembered the exciting and well-made Imax film on the canyon which I’d seen there with my father back in 1991. It turned out they are still showing that same film to this day, even though it was shot back in 1984, when I was just graduating from high school.

I was playing tour guide since I’d been to the canyon long ago. I decided we should park the car at the visitor center at Mather Point and then ride shuttle buses to other points on the rim to the west. That way we could take shelter from the wind in the old lodges at Grand Canyon Village.

We parked in one of several lots at Mather Point and grabbed a lunch of cold sandwiches. It was an uncomfortably windy outdoor meal, with cool and strong gusts from the north. So we were wearing jackets, and I had my Tilley hat strapped down when we got our first look at the canyon. We had to walk over towards Mather Point, whereas I remembered it being right off the road. The Park Service reworked the area back in 2010.

The view was, of course, quite stunning. I remember feeling disoriented upon my first view of the canyon with my father back in 1991, and Wendy had a similar experience upon her first sight of it. She felt dizzy as her mind struggled to interpret the immense chasm, with the North Rim 10 miles away and the canyon bottom a mile below us. The view was literally vertiginous. We exchanged taking couples photographs to celebrate our arrival.

It was a Monday afternoon, but the South Rim was busy. There were loads of tourists like us, of various nationalities, all along the rails at Mather Point and points beyond. We made our way out to the point, where Little Kion joined in the fun, trying to act big.

Mather Point is now the first view of the canyon for most tourists, and it is fittingly named after Stephen Mather. He was the energetic first director of the Park Service in the early 20th century. He was bipolar, so his manic efforts on behalf of the parks were often followed by nervous breakdowns, but he accomplished much, and he was one of the main advocates for establishing a Grand Canyon National Park.

I could see the Isis Temple prominence poking up from the North Rim five miles away, with the line of a trail visible across one of the mesas on our side of the canyon. The Park Service photograph at right by Michael Quinn shows the many switchbacks of the Bright Angel Trail, which leads down to the canyon bottom.

We boarded a shuttle which took us to the Yavapai Geology Museum. This small facility was built in 1928 and rededicated in 2007 after a renovation. It had a large topographic relief map and a rock layer display. We scanned them, but I think John had the right idea: sit down and enjoy the view. The Temple of Isis was directly across the canyon from there. Our couples again took snapshots of each other outside, and Wendy posed near the rim for me.

We had all noticed a large cave-like opening in the side of one ridge, and my superzoom camera provided a better look at it. 335 of the estimated 1,000 caves in the canyon have been recorded, but only one can be toured.

John is quite observant. His sharp eyes spied a bridge across the Colorado far below. I used my superzoom on that as well. It is a 440 foot span that carries hikers and mules 70 feet above the river to Phantom Ranch.

Another shuttle bus ride took us to Grand Canyon Village, where there are several lodges. I’d checked on rooms there many months back, but they were all booked up, and the crowds along the rim and in the lodge lobbies made me glad we stayed at the Best Western in Tusayan.

We climbed up from the train depot to visit the lobby and gift shop at the El Tovar Lodge, which was designed by Charles Whittlesey for the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe and opened back in 1905. It has a rather dark lobby, and its exterior was designed as a cross between a Swiss chalet and a Norwegian Villa in a mishmash of styles in the manner popular in that era. I much prefer the more cohesive rustic style of Mary Colter‘s Bright Angel Lodge of 1935. Both hotels were Harvey Houses, with the Bright Angel created as a less expensive alternative to El Tovar.

Colter designed many structures along the South Rim, including the Hopi House, which opened in 1905 adjacent to the El Tovar as a gift shop of Native American items, and it still serves that function. It has a striking exterior with its varied windows and intricately stacked stones. The interior is so crowded with tourists and wares that one struggles to make out its architectural details.

Along the rim we could see a prominence on our side of the canyon somewhat like the Isis Temple. Below it we could see the Bright Angel Trail following Garden Creek to a grove of trees which mark the Indian Garden campground. John’s sharp eyes picked out buildings down there, confirmed by my superzoom camera. There is a trail leading out across the top of the mesa that dead-ends at the canyon drop; that is a side trail from Bright Angel to Plateau Point and takes hours to hike. From the rim it is difficult to gauge the distances below.

We walked along the Rim Trail for the beautiful views at Grand Canyon Village. The desert air was drying us out, and the water we carried was now warm, so we hoped to find some cool refreshments. Verkamp’s Curios Store from 1905 was still selling items, but not refreshments. So I led us back west along the Rim Trail, knowing that Bright Angel Lodge would surely offer something.

We passed the back side of the El Tovar, which had a bunch of plants growing in protective cages. Farther along the rim we could see Colter’s Lookout Studio perched atop its mountain of rock. I could see tourists on its various levels gazing out into the canyon.

We passed the uninspiring Kachina and Thunderbird lodges of the 1960s and, sure enough, found an ice cream stand at the Bright Angel Lodge. After that treat, we toured the Harvey House room in the lodge, which I remembered from my 1991 visit with my father.

Outside, we located the Bright Angel Trailhead where hikers and mules make the hours-long trek to the bottom of the canyon. John goes on trail rides with his own mule, but none of us had wanted to book a mule ride down into the canyon. After one last look out at the canyon, we were ready to call it a day.

We took the shuttle back to the car and had dinner at the Big E Steakhouse in Tusayan. They had a neat slideshow running on the stage, but I suggest you avoid their mushroom & cream cheese wontons. Our servers kept forgetting to bring them and, when they finally did, I wish they hadn’t. But we enjoyed our steaks.

Wendy and I returned to our hotel room to discover we had been left only decorative pillows on the bed, and none of the ones for sleeping. I notified the front desk, and a bellboy delivered some to us. But Wendy noticed they felt damp and one had the odor of someone’s bottom. We made do with the three that were least objectionable, and the next morning she wrote a note to the housekeeper about the problem in both English and Spanish. I included the usual nice tip with it, grateful that my wife knows some Spanish, whereas I only retain a tiny bit of Latin, which is of little use in everyday living. Wendy’s note yielded a sincere apology, written in Spanish, that indicated gratitude for our tips and our bed was outfitted with new pillows for the next night. The pillows were still too squishy, collapsing to a thin layer when you rested your head on them, but at least they were dry and smelled fresh.

For our second day at the canyon, we got up earlier for a morning drive east along the rim to Desert View, hoping to avoid some of the crowds, and then headed north in the afternoon to see the Navajo Bridge at Marble Canyon.

SLIDESHOW | PHOTO ALBUM

A Grand Adventure, Day 5: To Desert View & Marble Canyon >

< A Grand Adventure, Day 3: The Petrified Forest

TRIP DATES: June 11, 2017 | SLIDESHOW | PHOTO ALBUM

The third day of our adventure out west in June 2017 was a long drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Tusayan, Arizona featuring a drive through the north end of the Petrified Forest National Park.

We drove west from Albuquerque through El Malpais, the Badlands of west central New Mexico. Thousands of acres of landscape to the south is broken up by pitch-black, concrete-hard, glassy, sharp rock with many lava tubes and craters. I tried to tour the volcanic landscape back in 2011, but was thwarted by a storm which flooded the unpaved roadway. In the end, I wound up with a muddy mess of a car both inside and out.

It turned out we would travel through the Badlands four days later on our eastward return from the Grand Canyon. But for the trip west we forged onward to Gallup for lunch at a Cracker Barrel and onward into Arizona to visit the north end of the Petrified Forest.

I-40 paralleled one of the three transcontinental routes of the Burlington, Northern, and Santa Fe railroad from just east of Grants, New Mexico for over 275 miles to our turnoff to the Grand Canyon in central Arizona. Our fellow traveller John Henderson builds bridges for the BNSF’s main competitor, Union Pacific. Wendy and I marvelled at the frequent long trains with multiple engines which we saw all along the route.

200 miles west of Albuquerque we turned north off I-40 to visit the northern part of the Petrified Forest. The petrified wood found in that park and the surrounding region is made up of almost solid quartz. A rainbow of colors is produced by impurities in the quartz, such as iron, carbon, and manganese. Over 200 million years ago, logs washed into an ancient river system and were buried quickly and deeply enough by massive amounts of sediment and debris to cut off the oxygen and extend their decay for centuries.

Minerals, including silica dissolved from volcanic ash, absorbed into the porous wood over hundreds and thousands of years slowly crystallized within the cellular structure, replacing the organic material as it broke down over time. Sometimes crushing or decay left cracks in the logs where large jewel-like crystals of clear quartz, purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and smoky quartz formed.

I had deliberately included stops at the Petrified Forest on both our way out and back, knowing how much Betty Henderson loves petrified wood. Wendy the rockhound loves the stuff too, of course, and provided several close-up shots. At the visitor center John spotted a huge petrified log we could examine.

We paid $20 for each vehicle to enter the forest, even though we only had time to visit the viewpoints north of the interstate; the passes were good for a week, so they would serve us again in a few days when we would drive through the park from its southern entrance on our return journey.

Tiponi Point was our first panorama of the Painted Desert. The desert here is composed of stratified layers of easily erodible siltstone, mudstone, and shale of the Triassic Chinle Formation. The iron and manganese compounds in these layers provide the vivid colors that led a troop of men from Coronado’s 1540 expedition, who had been sent to find the Colorado river, to name this area El Desierto Pintado.

Next was Tawa Point, with striking color contrasts and multicolored slopes. The Hendersons posed for me there. The road wound around, bringing the Painted Desert Inn into view above Kachina Point.

The Painted Desert Inn

The Inn began as the Stone Tree House by Herbert David Lore, with a top-level lunchroom and area for Indian crafts to be sold, a bottom-level taproom, and six tiny guest rooms. They still sell Native American works in the Inn, and John Henderson bought a lovely bracelet there for John and Betty’s daughter Elizabeth.

Mr. Lore built the Stone Tree House with petrified wood and other native stone. Unfortunately, the stones rested on a foundation undermined by a seam of bentonite clay, so the foundation and walls cracked as the clay swelled and shrank. When the Park Service took over the property in the 1930s, architect Lyle Bennett redesigned it in the Pueblo Revival style one sees so much of in Santa Fe, although one can still find the petrified wood used in the old house peeking out around the lower level doorway. The exterior and interior were transformed under Bennett’s direction by CCC workers during the Great Depression.

The famed Fred Harvey Company, whose hotels and related buildings at the Grand Canyon are prime attractions on its South Rim, took over the property after World War II. Its renowned architect, Mary Colter, added plate glass windows to emphasize the views out to Kachina Point. She also implemented a new color scheme while hiring Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to paint murals on the lunchroom walls.

Continuing structural problems due to the clay underneath the building led the Fred Harvey Company to relocate to the current visitor’s center in 1963. The Painted Desert Inn was threatened with demolition, but a public campaign saved the historic structure. Renovations in 2004-2006 extended its life with thirteen floating roofs, joint-less pipes, and flagstones being re-laid to improve drainage.

I took the time to walk around to the west side of the building and peer into the six tiny rooms, which are little more than cubicles with a corner sink. Some of them were once home to “Harvey girls” who worked at the facility. 

After relaxing at the Inn, we drove on to Pintado Point, where Wendy and I posed in front of the Painted Desert. There is no access to I-40 if one continues through the park, so we turned about for refreshments at the visitor center before continuing our journey west.

With a pit stop at the Flying J outside Winslow and refueling in Flagstaff, we were ready to head to the Best Western in Tusayan, just south of the Grand Canyon. We could not take the direct route from Flagstaff along Highway 180, as it was closed by fire. A lightning strike in early June on the slopes of Kendrick Mountain ignited a wilderness area with many dead and downed trees killed in a wildfire back in 2000. The smoke made Highway 180 impassable, so we had to continue along I-40 west of Flagstaff and take Highway 64 north to Tusayan, from which we could see the smoke billowing from the mountainside.

I had been pleasantly surprised by the great condition of I-40 in Oklahoma and New Mexico. But the interstate was in very rough shape in Arizona west of Flagstaff. Signs warned of miles of rough road, and they weren’t kidding. The Flagstaff area usually experiences more than 200 daily freeze-thaw cycles each year where moisture seeps during the day into the asphalt overlay and then pops it when it expands upon freezing overnight. Heavy traffic exacerbates the issue. They need to rip out the interstate here and rebuild it with fresh impervious concrete panels.

We pulled into our hotel, the Best Western Premier Grand Canyon Squire Inn. It was a larger facility than most Best Westerns and even boasts a six-lane bowling alley. In recent years it has been overhauled with a new lobby and a ten-year plan will add 438 additional rooms. I appreciated the attractive lobby and pricey but adequate dining options.

I usually book a suite, or what a hotel bills as a suite, for Wendy and me since she likes to stay up late and sleep in, while I prefer to go to bed early and rise early. I spent an extra $100 per night for this at the Grand Canyon, over the quite comfortable but linear room the Hendersons occupied.

Our “suite” was very spacious with an enormous bathroom, living area, and small kitchen spot, but it had no true separation of the bedroom area from the living area, and you had to pass through the bedroom area to reach the bathroom. Whenever we find a hotel that truly separates the bedroom from the other areas, we make note of it, as that is a real plus for us as we don’t have to worry so much about waking each other up. The best rooms on this vacation in that regard were the Drury Inn in Amarillo and the DoubleTree Airport in Oklahoma City. But Wendy situated herself in the kitchen area each night while I drifted off to sleep, and all was well…except for the pillows, which is a story for a later post.

The next day we’d drive a few miles north for our first of two days at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim.

SLIDESHOW | PHOTO ALBUM

A Grand Adventure, Day 4: The South Rim >

< A Grand Adventure, Days 1 & 2: From Cadillac Ranch to TinkerTown