Eastern Grand Canyon

Trip Notes: Grand Canyon Desert Views

In addition, there was an even better bonus for geology buffs: it turns out that Lipan Point gives a nice view of the point on the river where the Vischnu Schist first becomes visible. We spent quite a while at Lipan, watching and photographing.

Desert View, with its tower, is interesting, of course. You can climb the tower (which is interesting and nicely designed in its own right) and get a lovely panoramic view. We had to contend with construction -- orange netting everywhere, jackhammers, and confusion. The restrooms were off to one side and as we found our way to them we ran into a ranger who was also looking for them so she would know where to send people. Turns out that they're actually fairly close to the parking lot, except that for some reason they have the two areas cordoned off from each other, so you have to jump a barrier in order to get back to your car after visiting the restrooms. Tres weird.

After exiting the park, we visited a few of the nice tacky Indian jewelry shops along the road from there to Cameron and thence to Page. The horrifying Indian Mall Gauntlet at the Little Colorado Gorge was pretty much as we remembered it, except that this late in the season only about half the tables were occupied. And -- bonus -- Chief Yellowhorse was actually open, so we finally had a chance to stop there. The promised jerky was nowhere in evidence and none of the rings quite fit me, so I had to be content with a tiny LED black light "scorpion finder" (scorpions fluoresce, or so it is said). We'd wished for something like that a few nights earlier in Kingman when we were tramping around in an empty lot playing around with the night settings on our cameras.

Chief Yellowhorse had cowboy music playing. The stupid cowboy theme continues ...

Later on, I finally found some "Beef Jerky", "Really really good" farther down the road. Mass produced, as usual. It was okay, not outstanding like the "Really good" jerky I bought from the Moapi once near the CA-NV border. They had some nice turtle earrings, too (still no rings that fit well enough).

Page: settled in our usual hotel (currently a Comfort Inn ... it tends to change hands) and finally found a good restaurant in Page, Fiesta Mexicana. Amazing! We certainly weren't going to go to the steakhouse across the street from the hotel, blaring obnoxious loud music so loud that it bothered us inside our hotel room with the windows closed. Bleah.