Grand Finale

Sunday 9^th June – From Bryce Canyon, we retraced our steps westward through Red Canyon, where we stopped to photograph spectacular examples of hoodoos.

Then we turned south into the Sevier River valley. There were a few farms and ranches here. Mount Carmel was the birthplace in 1875 of Maynard Dixon, an artist who devoted much of his life to depicting western life and landscapes. On we went down the Virgin River valley towards the town of Kanab. This town boasts of being ‘Little Hollywood’ due to the number of Western movies filmed here.  Just south of Kanab we crossed the border into Arizona.  The red sandstones were still with us. This area is known as the Kaibab Plateau and from Lefevre Viewpoint we could see a landscape feature called the Grand Staircase. This comprises a series of cliffs hundreds of miles long stepping down towards the Colorado Plateau. They are, from the end of Bryce Canyon, the Pink Cliffs, the White Cliffs and the Vermilion Cliffs.  There is nothing comparable on this scale in Britain.

We followed the Vermilion Cliffs (a rich reddish brown) to the Colorado River at Marble Canyon. Here, the Navajo Bridge, finished in 1929, opened up the route south as it one of only two bridges for hundreds of miles.  Across the river we drove through a Navajo Indian reservation and on, via Cameron, to Grand Canyon National Park.

Again, the scale of this park is more than one can imagine. It took a good half-hour to drive from the entrance to the rim area. (It was now  3.00 pm, we had gained an hour in Arizona.) The park boasts a village, visitor centre, geology museum and no less than four shuttle bus routes. It covers a strip of land over 100 miles long. The canyon is a mile deep.

 We had a mere 3.5 hours here and managed to take a short bus ride west, walked along the rim for half a mile, bussed back to Bright Angel and had supper. For me the canyon was overwhelming; the rim walk, 6 feet from the edge, hair-raising, say no more! Sunset was at 7,43 pm. We reached our hotel in Williams after 8 pm – a very long day.