Along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
My 2004 Jeep road trip took me to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. But rather than sticking to the paved roads, I explored many of the unpaved forest roads that wind through the tall pines and aspens. After all, I was driving a Jeep. Why would anyone subject herself to long distance highway driving in a Jeep if there wasn’t the reward of off-pavement travel in the immediate future?
It was autumn — third week in September, to be exact — and the aspen trees on the Kaibab Plateau were turning color. Aspens turn yellow in the fall and this shot shows them interspersed with the ponderosa pines that also grow there.
For this trip, I had my old GPS, which only holds about 4-5 topo maps in its database. I’d programmed in the ones for the North Rim area, so I had a highly detailed navigational aid for the maze of roads there. After spending the night in a cabin on the North Rim, I followed forest roads out to various lookout points on the North Rim that most tourists never see. My goal was to see from the ground what I saw from the air when I flew helicopter tours. I saw that and so much more. And in the hours I drove in Grand Canyon National Park — the most popular national park in America — I saw only one other person.
He was in a Jeep, too.
I’m sitting on a plastic chair on the front patio of a ground-floor apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, watching four men wash the apartment building across the street. It looks to be a 24-story building and, like most of the buildings in this area, it’s got a steel and glass facade. The four men are sitting on separate wooden seats — kind of like the seats you’d find on a swing set — hanging from ropes on top of the building, about four stories down. Two of them have long hoses and the other two have brushes on long poles and plastic pails. They’re all wearing shorts and sneakers and are doing a lot of bouncing off the walls as they move back and forth and down.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying my non-working hours in a clean, safe, and rather beautiful Canadian city. The weather is beautiful, in the mid 70s and mostly sunny, although a marine layer of clouds seems to be drifting in as I type this. My hotel and the office/apartment I’m working at are right on the water near Stanley Park. The view from my hotel room at the Westin is full of boats and seaplanes and healthy people strolling the waterfront.
I won’t go into details about the roads I tried and the wrong turns I took. Suffice it to say that I finally homed in on it. After driving down a two-track road that cut diagonally across the main runway, I parked my Jeep right in front of the gaping hangar door.
One thing is for sure: visiting the old airport and looking up at the faded paint over the door spelling out “Grand Canyon Airlines” has given me a real thirst for knowledge about the place. When I’m finished with my road trip book project and trip to Canada (for work), I might start doing a little research.