Day 5 - Grand Canyon

Today was a trip to the Grand Canyon. Once again we had to ride though Zion to get to the highway that would take to the Grand Canyon. This is the same highway that took us to Bryce Canyon yesterday. Turn left... go to Bryce. Turn right... go to Grand Canyon.

The first hour or so of todays ride was mostly through high desert stuff. Not very pretty. Shortly after leaving Fredonia we started to climb in elevation. The landscape changed from desert to pine forest and mountain meadows. The ride from this point into the Grand Canyon is VERY beautiful. The road is in perfect condition - not a single bump.

Rather than go to the visitor center first we decided to head to Point Imperial and Cape Royal to see what views of the canyon were there. All of the pictures of the canyon are from those two areas. It was not at all what I expected the ride in to be like. We were in dense trees and bushes all the way to the edge of the canyon. Only at the very end did the canyon open up before us.

This was my first time to see the Grand Canyon. The first impression one gets is just the size. It is really, really, large. Large enough so I have some doubts about the theory that it was created by the river slowly eroding its way down. (That debate can be held later....) The drop off into the canyon is very rapid. Each time I looked over I held on to something and my legs still felt wobbly.....

You can see from the pictures that a storm was brewing on the south rim of the canyon. We decided after leaving Cape Royal that there was no time to go to the visitor center. Out running the storm was our priority. We succeeded in that we didn't get drenched by rain. However, the entire ride home (150 miles) was either raining on us, about to rain on us, or it had just finished raining. The windshields on our bikes blasted most of the rain away from our bodies so we stayed reasonably dry. Only our legs and arms got wet.

Remember when I mentioned the roads were perfect... we really appreciated that because we were going as fast as we could (safely).

By the time we got back to Springdale we were cold and sore because we didn't get to take the usual breaks we like to. Once we were back a nice hot shower helped greatly.

Tomorrow we'll be taking the shuttle bus into Zion Park. We have only ridden through the end of the park. All the stuff worth seeing can only be seen by taking a shuttle in. Then later in the day we'll start the return trip home.