TRAVEL: Day 3, Mule Ride, North Rim & Point Royal 9-22

I'm up very early for a mule ride to Supai Tunnel on the Kaibab Trail, on Bonnie, a 17-year old mule. I'm reading Wallace Stegner and David Wortser's biographies of John Wesley Powell, and imagining the hardships he and his exhibitions endured.  

Thomas Moran

It's a crisp, sunny morning, and there are warm pockets of sunlight against the south-facing canyon walls as we ride down the trail, while shadows are chill.  The mules are trained to ride on the outside of the trail, close to the edge, so that requires some behavior mod to control a bit of nervousness.  

The canyon rim views were astonishing as always. As always I love the mental struggle to encompass the events which have wrought such an indescribable place. As always, I plan to come back, tell-tale evidence of a good vacation.

I will not see the river on this ride.  That is for later, when we go to Point Royal.

At least, I can get a stratigraphic map to show the layers of rock, though the dating is left off.  It's old. Old world, looking at the bedrock is to imagine creation's process at one point in time, but still wondering, why? Thinking it's all chance is even more astonishing than positing God. God is purposeful, chance not so much. 

In my paint box the colors of the canyon are there, waiting for me.  But no painter can do more for me than what happens to me as I gaze.

Petrified footprints of an extinct sauropod on the way down Kaibab Trail.

This looks like a giant goblet overflowing - the desert varnish streaks it as the sandstone is undercut by erosion.

Point Royal is even more remote, but after driving across the Walhalla Plateau we are in yet another place of wonder.  

Viewpoints are numerous and spectacular, making it easy for us to cheat the rigorous requirements of the hiking gods.

The river snakes pale green and distant, finally showing its restless bed.

Angel's Window is visible from a distance and it's a unique formation, foreshadowing the arches and bridges we will see later. I take time to walk out on it, marveling at how much room there is on top - certainly could land a helicopter there, but conclude that this is the perfect fit for the 900 angels to rest when they're not trying to fit on the edge of a pin.

I confess to skipping Point Sublime, though Edmund Burke would have urged seeing it.  It's two more hours over a bad road and we are pacing ourselves.  I give you instead a historic image from Clarence Dutton's Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon, published in 1882 with plates by William Holmes and artwork by Thomas Moran.

Then.

Now. I wish now we'd gone and done it. Way does lead onto way.

The nights are chill, and soon the major roads and services will close for the winter. The heat of the day is deceiving, but the aspen are changing, giving us bountiful generous views of their golden cloaks shimmering.

 So many wonderful western autumns we've spent celebrating the aspens' turn to winter.