Monday Morning at Grand Canyon National Park

September 24, 2018

I drove most of the day on Sunday to get from Capitol Reef National Park to Grand Canyon National Park. I found my campsite, got my tent set up, and supper preparations started  before Dutch and Tracy arrived.  They had flown into Phoenix and then gone camping with a friend from Tucson before driving on up to meet me. They got in in time to set up before dark. We pretty much got a stir fry over riced cauliflower ready to eat too.  But we were distracted by a bull elk and a couple of cows, as well as one calf that treated our campsite and the surrounding area as theirs. The bull was coming into rut and was periodically bugling. Later he chased of a smaller rival while near our camp. 

This bull elk plus his females and calves spent a lot of time around our campsite

Dutch and I are both avid photographers and wanted to do the sunrise tour. This involved us getting up around 4 AM, making sure we had our cameras and water, and driving to a parking lot at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, and catching a bus.  (Private cars are not allowed to drive on a lot of the roads.) We bumbled around a bit before locating the right parking lot, then the right bus. The bus was so full we had to ride standing up.  But soon we were walking east along the rim at Yaki Point.  Only one intrepid photographer was out on the rocks that face the sunrise when we arrived, but he soon had another twenty or thirty friends including me. Others took their pictures from different vantage points along the rim. 

Within a half hour after sunrise, most of the sunrise viewers had departed, leaving us to enjoy the ever changing light on the formations in the canyon and the birds that were busy feeding. I got into the photography business when a Pakistani family asked me to take their picture.  Then a pair of Australian guys asked me to do the same for them.  I ended up taking a couple of poses of them against the now beautiful background and got hugs from both of them before they got on their motorcycles and continued on their trip.  They were going to end up in California. 

The sunrise is well documented here

We didn't get much of a sunrise because it was too cloudy

I liked the cloud colors in the southeast

I was fascinated with the light interacting with the formations

Light painting

We got a double sunrise due to a cloud bank - second one was best

This became the spot for people photos

Tracy and Dutch

Captured while strolling along the rim

Shadow selfie

We were getting hungry, so we came back to camp for breakfast. Dutch cooked scrambled eggs and onions for us and we had some gluten free bread that our Tucson friend had baked for them. We enjoyed the elk and bird visitors to our camp. A

Mother and baby elk just behind our camp- that is the showers and laundry building behind them 

Tracy, Dutch and uninvited guest at breakfast

 After we started on our next exploration,  Dutch began to have what he thought was an allergy attack and ended up wanting to come back to  camp and sleep. Tracy and I stayed  at the Visitors Center and then walked to Mather Point and on to the Geology Museum before catching a bus back to the front of our campground. 

I had to take this picture of Apache plume seeds - they were catching the light so beautifully

A VERY long glimpse of the Colorado River

This stone will probably fall in a few short geological years - 100 -1000 years

The colors and feel of the canyon changes with the light

Rabbit bush was in bloom everywhere

A late view of the canyon

There are many towering whitish ricks agains the darker ones further down in the canyon

A closer formation against the canyon backdrop

Dutch was feeling even worse and now had a very bad sore throat. He and Tracy went shopping for various medicines and he then went back to sleep sitting up in the car while Tracy cooked lentil stew for supper. We were all tired and had an early night and decided to wait until morning to make plans . But we ended up having a very enjoyable day that I’ll share with you in two blogs. Stay tuned.