Monsoon strikes again.

After only one full day of routine work we are in our days off.  Foot loose and fancy free until Thursday, almost.  Since the fire pits have not been serviced for more than a week I helped our co-host, Don make the rounds this morning.  It took us three hours to do what will probably only be an hour or so once we get caught up.

It was a beautiful morning and Cyndee was scoping out some hiking trails for us to take after lunch.  There looked to be some fair weather clouds building to the south but here in the Ponderosa Pine forest it is hard to tell, not to mention that the weather can change rapidly any time.  Regardless we packed our water bag, grabbed some apples, put a full charge on the camera battery and headed out for the Walhalla Plateau.

Up to this point all the pictures I have shared on this blog have been from the general area of the North Rim Campground.  The campground is on the Kaibab Plateau which has a thin little finger that was carved by The Transept on the west side and the Roaring Springs Canyon on the east.  The campground is perched on this sliver of land and the Lodge itself is on the tip-end.  Except for the pictures from the point where we go to get a cell phone signal, none have really been of the Grand Canyon itself.  We have read on some of the travel review websites that people have knocked the North Rim because you can't actually see the Grand Canyon (except the South Rim) or the Colorado River.  After only a few days here we are saying; "Who cares?  It is awesome here."

It is about twenty miles to get from the campground to the end of the Cape Royal road on the Walhalla Plateau.  It is a paved road but it is narrow and winding, there are large signs warning people to not use vehicles longer than 30 feet because of tight switch-backs.  We noticed a lot of people ignored the warning as there were many class C RVs over thirty feet long on the road with us, all of them rentals.  And based on our experience in the campground for the past few days, probably all driven by western Europeans.  Maybe the warning signs should have used meters instead of feet.

We were just getting to some of the first turn-outs and overlooks when it began to rain.  Most of the rain was a localized downpour, the problem was that all the local spots were where we wanted to go.  We ducked and dodged showers, downpours, lightning and hail.  For the most part the light for taking pictures was at best, poor.  There were a few minutes here and there where the light was interesting, even so we snapped about 100 frames.  Everything was from the road, there was never a long enough break in the weather to get on a foot trail. 

From this point on this post will be a photo essay:

Before I get into the scenery, here is a six-door Prius that showed up in the campground this morning.  Picture was taken with iPhone while driving by in the 4-wheeler with leather gloves on.

These rain shafts dogged us all afternoon but they can make for some dramatic pictures.

The cliffs that are wet with rain take on a deeper red.

There were a couple of places on the Cape Royal road that put you up high enough that you could look down on the South Rim Plateau.

It is not really visible in this photo but the Colorado River is down in the bottom of this great big bowl.



Down in the bottom of the bowl, the Colorado makes a deep bend.

Looking closer you can just begin to
make out a "platform" in the crook of
the river.

In the area with the vegetation there have been ruins discovered.  Archeological digs have determined that people from thousands of years ago built rock-wall living structures.

Cyndee be stylin' in her rain coat while dashing to get pictures between downpours.

Angel's Window.  A naturally formed keystone cut in this giant rock formation.

Angel's Window from below.

Angel's Window from above.

This photo is not a trick, I really am sitting on the edge of a cliff with my legs dangling over the edge and nothing between me and the bottom but a few thousand feet.

Looking east and north of Angel's window is quite the view, even if it is a poor weather day.

August is peak bloom time on the North Rim

I'll end today's post same as yesterday's with a panorama.  Way off in the distance, the little blue-gray line are the San Francisco Peaks.  Flagstaff sits at the foot of the big one, almost a five hour drive from here.