You can be certain that we were nearly the first at breakfast as we were uncertain at which point they’d run out of food. Should you wonder why we didn’t head somewhere else for dinner or breakfast, well, “somewhere else” is Jacob Lake, about 45 miles away, which requires an easy hour to drive in each direction.
It’s a rare day in a national park that we pull up to the best seats in a lodge to just sit back and watch the weather pass, but that’s what we are embarking on right now. From a still-dark canyon when we first peeked into this fog-filled void prior to our visit to the dining room, the rain comes and goes. Also on the move have been some whisps of clouds forming off the edges of cliffs and nearby outcroppings.
In between, the sun pops out and brings golden light to small corners of the vast landscape sprawled before us, while at other fleeting moments, rainbows spring into their ephemeral existence and just as quickly fade away. The canopy floats by or is it hovering over the canyon? Whatever it’s doing or how it might be characterized, it’s beautiful.
Sitting here, I think about how, previously, we’ve seen others passing their time at this picture window and thought they were wasting an opportunity when they could have been on the go and capturing so much more outside on the trails. Maybe that was a testament to how much more contemplative those people were as compared to us at the time because here we are today, just like those people, monopolizing the comfy leather couch facing the panorama window.
Just one of the many rainbows we watched come and go.
There won’t be a lot of variation in these photos aside from shifting weather and light as our plan to hit the North Kaibab Trail for a few miles of hiking today has been scratched due to the rain and our general satisfaction that not only had we hiked a considerable amount yesterday (about 12 miles), but we have these great seats that seem to be encouraging us to keep them warm (and get some sock knitting done).
A funny aside, when people want to step in front of the window we are camping at, they often excuse themselves as though the view was all ours.
Funnier yet was meeting Larry and Peggy Walker, World Travelers. Larry first tried passing his wife off on me; well, he threatened that she might sit in my lap if I objected to sharing the view. This was followed up by him moving slyly into my spot next to Caroline when I had stood up to snap a photo or two. His smiling face of “Gotcha” was certainly worth a good laugh. It turned out that these two were celebrating their 50th anniversary this week while also accompanying some friends who were renewing their vows in Vegas. Larry and Peggy are just an awesome happy couple and an inspiration to both of us. Hopefully, we, too see our 50th anniversary someday.
We sat a bit longer and started to learn that many people want to stop and talk, so contemplative moments are not all that easy to have. With this realization, we consider that it’s time to get moving again, but just then, another weather front is coming in from the east, and I’m curious to watch the canyon disappear again. As we got up after sitting there for close to three hours, we saw that all around us, the trappings that make the lodge a comfy place had been disappearing as the crew, anxious to be finished for the season, had been busy clearing the place out.
This must be a record year regarding how many times we’ve passed through the Vermilion Cliffs area, and each encounter is as worthy as any of the other travels through here.
I’ve taken countless photos over the years of the Colorado River from the Navajo Bridge but I’m not sure I’ve ever taken one in this kind of light. I took this thought not as yet another iteration of this scene but as an establishing shot of what comes next. First, though, there’s a tiny detail at the top of the cliffside on the right, and while you can’t see it right now, it’ll all become clear in the next photo. Oh, and consider that the bridge we are on is 467 feet (142 meters) over the river below, which should give you some idea about the scale.
On the lower right sits an incredibly rare bird, rarer than its parents, above it to the left. That black spot is a fledgling condor born in the wild, one of a small handful. These are just three of the approximately 115 condors that are hopefully still alive in Arizona, and if I had to guess, I’d say that Caroline and I have seen no less than 15 of these giants of the scavenger world or more than 10% of all condors in our state; that’s simultaneously cool and tragic. Think about it: we are barely holding on to the 500 or so California Condors that still exist, although that’s from a low point of just 27 birds left in existence back in 1987. If we are having this difficulty keeping a species of bird with a 10-foot wide wingspan alive, what would make us believe we can keep ourselves going into the future? And if you believe it’s natural selection, the demise of condors was due to humans using lead ammunition for hunting and leaving animals and entrails in the wild where the birds would naturally finish them off. The resulting lead poisoning nearly brought them to extinction.
Since leaving the remarkable sight of the fledgling, we’ve been hitting intermittent rain, sometimes heavy. Just south of Flagstaff, the intensity of this rainbow demanded we stop. Sadly, the photo does it no justice.
From a distance, we thought we were looking at sun rays shining through the clouds onto the forest that sits on the flank of San Francisco Mountain below Humphry’s Peak, that’s well out of sight. Nope, it wasn’t until we pulled over that we saw the thousands of Aspen trees changing color with the change of season.
Hmmm, maybe Sedona is the magic place so many believe it is, as here we are at Highway 179, which is the exit for Sedona, and it was double-rainbows all the way.
