Honeymoon Day 25: Grand Canyon (North Rim)

With some reluctance my yin and I left the state of Utah on a Saturday morning, and I have never been so wrong about a state – not even Idaho – as I was about Utah. In terms of sheer physical beauty and variety of geographic features, it's hard to imagine a place that is so beautiful in so many different ways in so little amount of space. Nonetheless, we had other places to be:

Given the arc of our trip, it would have been impossible to pass up a chance to see the Grand Canyon, but everyone we knew told us that we should go to the North Rim rather than the South Rim. Besides being a thousand feet higher in elevation (and therefore cooler) the North Rim is much less developed, and our friends and family thought this would appeal to our collective sensibilities.

But this is beside the point.

(Probably.)

The point is that the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was far and away the least populated National Park we visited, and there is a single road (closed in the winter) that leads in from the small crossroads of Jacob Lake. Arriving at our destinatIon, we ducked briefly into the lodge and found a giant kachina doll in the corner:

These figures are somehow connected to Native American cosmology, but I'm still not sure exactly how. We saw them throughout Arizona, and at some point I intend to learn more about the symbolic meanings of the various totems and weaving patterns. But, considering that they had a bronze donkey on the other side of the room, the lodge didn't seem like the best place to inquire about the kachina's spiritual significance.

Instead we took a short hike down into the canyon, descending a half-mile or so to:

Which gave us a view to the south:

And allowed us to see geologic striations called "lacquering" on the western canyon wall:

One thing that surprised me about the Grand Canyon is that it's not just a single giant gorge carved out by the Colorado River, but rather a whole series of ravines and canyons converging from numerous directions.

As we did the day before, my yin and I spent a couple of hours shuttling around the extremities of the park looking out from various overlooks. One of the coolest was this view of Angel's Window:

Viewed from the right angle, it frames the Little Colorado River:

At one of these stops we ran into three English "blokes":

One of them scaled a fence to pose for this picture.

Like us, they had been to Zion a few days before, and one of them told us that they had "run up Angel's Landing" so they could get around "the pansies." How much of their banter was braggadocio I'm uncertain, but I do know that they were three of the most colorful characters we met along the way.

The next morning we ran into them again at the Jacob Lake Inn where we had all stopped at 6:30 to get a cup of morning coffee. They were on their way back to St. George to return their rental car, then going on to: 1) gamble in Las Vegas; 2) rent motorcycles and ride them through Death Valley; and 3) spend a day on the beach in Santa Cruz before flying back to England.

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After our encounter with the blokes, we went to Cape Royal, which affords stellar views of Vishnu's Temple. Many of the rock formations in the Grand Canyon are named after mythological and religious entities (Buddha, Confucius, etc.) thanks to one of the park's early surveyor's who had an interest in Eastern philosophical traditions. I can't remember his name, but here is a photograph of my yin practicing Vishnu Mudra in front of Vishnu's Temple:

We also came across come cacti on Cape Royal, which surprised me because it is more of an alpine rather than desert climate. I wondered to myself why it was I felt so drawn to these plants, in which I never had much interest prior to our trip. I think it has something to do with their underlying metaphysical implications (sukha and dukkha), which were brought into focus with the help of our 50mm lens:

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After leaving Cape Royal, we stopped at Walhalla Point to examine Anasazi ruins. Apparently the Native Americans who once lived in this part of the world were farming people, and they lived in stone pueblos. This is all that remains today:

About 100 yards away was this tree, which had the most interesting shape:

It looked even better, though, with my yin standing in front of it:

When we got back to the main section of the park, my yin and I were on our way to the general store when we saw a building that contained pay showers. At this point, we hadn't bathed in days, and you have never seen two people any more pleased by running water and tile floors. As my yin put it, "That was the best $1.50 I ever spent."

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We went back to the lodge for sunset and made a few calls to our family and friends. We had been without cell phone service for even longer than we had been without showers, and it was nice to touch base with everyone. Also, the views weren't bad at all...