Tuesday August 22nd
After getting organised (not my strength!), I walked to the edge of the canyon again. I was slow in getting ready, and just missed the sunrise but the colours were beautiful with the rising sun shining on the rocks. It was pretty cloudy but there was a bit of a crack in the clouds that the sun shone through, thank you Lord!
I had intended to do a four hour hike into the Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail, but I seemed to end up spending far more time finding things and getting prepared than I expected, and so with a couple of stops along the 40 minute drive to the hike, it was about 8.30 or 9 by the time I got there. The car park for the trail was fairly full, and I had read that parking spots there were in high demand, but I found a spot. I wanted to leave the canyon by 1, and I wasn't sure how much longer it would be to hike up out of the Canyon than it was to go into it, so I just hiked for about three quarters of an hour downwards.
The trail wound down alongside high rock faces, with sweeping views. I saw my first squirrel along the track, and took photos of it. Seeing squirrels would become a very commonplace occurrence! There were stairs in a lot of places, and warning signs about not going so far down that you couldn’t get up again, including one with a graphic of someone being sick. There were water fountains in a few places on the trail. I passed one of them, but I had taken enough water for the distance I was going.
The trail was also used by trains of mules, to deliver supplies, I guess to campgrounds at the bottom, and though I didn’t pass any of the mules, I saw a train of them a long way down, and was continually reminded of them, coming across their exhaust! The clouds had cleared a fair bit by this time, and it was fairly sunny, but not too hot. I could see where the trail wound a long way down in the distance.
I got back out of the canyon unexpectedly quickly, so I went looking for the shuttle bus that went along a route to the west with quite a few scenic spots that you could otherwise only walk to. There was a road, but people weren’t allowed to drive along it, only buses and bikes. I stayed parked where I was as the bus stop was supposed to be fairly close, and I wasn’t sure if I would find parking elsewhere.
The spot the map suggested the bus stop was didn't seem to be where it really was. I ran into a group who were also trying to find it, and we discovered it together and had a nice chat, they were from Germany. It turned out though that there were huge queues waiting for the bus, and after a couple of buses came, filled up and left, and time was passing, and we were still nowhere near the front of the line, I decided to just hike to a couple of the spots.
The camp host had mentioned a place called the Abyss where you could look down 4,000 feet. That was too far to hike to in the time I had, so I hiked to the first scenic view, then a shuttle bus was coming to a bus stop there just as I was ready to leave, so I hopped on and got to the next stop, then walked back both stops. It was a great hike, right along the edge of the canyon, with plenty of views. I made my way back to the car park, and got going again.
From the Canyon I was to head to Nevada, to Boulder Beach campground at Lake Mead, which is what the Hoover Dam is built on. I made my way down from the mountains. Someone had recommended trying a bison burger, so I was looking for a place that would have one. I got to the little town of Tusayan not far from the canyon and had turned into a parking lot looking for a place to eat. I didn’t find what I was looking for, and when I was exiting, I somehow thought I could turn left and headed to do the turn across the lanes of traffic. I got onto the road before finding that there there wasn't a gap in the median strip to get to the other side, and ending up pointing the wrong way on the left hand side of the road! I put on the hazard lights, and thankfully I was able to drive on the wrong side for a short way to somewhere I could cross over!
After a while the smaller road I was on joined I-40 heading west, and I ended up having lunch at a Route 66 themed Diner in a town called Williams not far from the turnoff (I travelled some of the way along the old Route 66), which was my first experience in a diner. The milkshake was topped with cream, and a cherry. They didn’t have bison burgers, but the meal was tasty.
I ran into more rain as I continued my journey, and I remember driving at 75mph (120km/h) with everyone else on the highway, around a curve, as the rain pelted down! The road wasn't crowded, though there were a good number of cars. As I headed down from the mountains I was greeted by a very different landscape. I was going back into the desert again as I descended, and instead of the 21 degrees that it was at the Canyon, it was sunny and getting into the mid to high 30s. That part of Arizona, and most of Nevada seemed to be mainly desert.
As I travelled, I passed a car going fairly slowly in the right lane, and then a little while later, I found myself passing it again, they must have sped up and passed me. This happened a third time, then the car whizzed on ahead well over the speed limit. When the car was almost out of sight and another car was about to block it from my view, the driver flashed the hazard lights. I have no idea what it was all about.
At the town of Kingman, I-40 went south, and I turned off north towards Las Vegas. As I was getting near my destination I found a lookout over the Hoover Dam, and some people who were also parked there asked me to take a photo of them. Not long afterwards I crossed a bridge over the Colorado River just as it exited from the dam, into Nevada. The river flowed through the dam, and was the border between Arizona and Nevada. This was my first encounter with the Colorado river, but by no means the last.
I took a turnoff from the highway, went through a checkpoint to get into Lake Mead National Recreation Area, using my National Parks pass again, and came to the campground, where it was still something like 36 degrees, even towards evening. I found my spot, which had a great view of the lake. I’d had my pick of the campsites when I’d booked months before, and was able to get one with a nice view. The lake was a strange place, with such a large body of water surrounded by desert, but had a beauty of its own.
It was only a bit after six and there was still a while before sunset, so I went to see the Hoover Dam which wasn't far away. To get in you had to go through a checkpoint where someone searched your vehicle. They did a very cursory look, I could have been hiding anything. Presumably I didn't look suspicious!
The dam was a very impressive sight, and even being there it was hard to get a feel for the size of it, until I looked down the dam wall while crossing it. It was a very long way down! There were some massive intake towers too. It was towards sunset when I was there, and there weren't many people. I could see a large multi-storey parking lot, so it probably got quite crowded. I walked back part way across the bridge over the Colorado River that I’d driven over coming in, and got a view of the dam stretching a long way back from the wall.
The dam generates a lot of hydroelectric power, and I could see, even from a long way up, the water swirling out from below the dam wall. There were power pylons at odd angles on the edge of the rock walls, taking the power from generators at the bottom, apparently angled that way so that the wires didn’t touch the sides of the rock walls. It looked as though they were in the process of toppling over! They did tours of the power station, but I think they had finished for the day. It was interesting to read about some of the history of how they made the dam and power plant, and the challenges they had.
After I’d seen my fill I drove back to the campsite and made some dinner, eating it while enjoying the view over the lake. The campsite was fairly open, and there was someone playing music or NetFlix or something nearby that I could hear, though it didn’t bother me much. It was one of the only times I noticed much noise in the evening at any of the campgrounds, mostly people seemed to be pretty quiet.
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