Our "vacation" to the Grand Canyon (South Rim)

Two posts back I mentioned that we were going to take advantage of the last few days of our co-hosts being around and use our days off to go for a long weekend on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Last year we got over to Flagstaff for an overnight trip and, among other things, we day-tripped out to the South Rim.  We got a taste of what it was like with most of our time being spent at the extreme east end of the park, Desert View.

But there is much more to see and this year we are taking a three day weekend with almost the whole time dedicated to the South Rim.  Cyndee spent a couple of weeks trying to wrangle us a hotel room that was available on our days off, convenient to the South Rim and affordable.  Turns out that was a tall order.  First, finding any room that was available for two nights in a row was tough.  And if you got anywhere near, less than an hour away from the park entrance, the prices jumped well above $200/night.  I've paid that much for a room at five star hotels in the center of some of the worlds largest cities but we are talking Motel 6 here.  I just can't do it.  I kind of expected high prices during the peak season when the kids were out of school and everybody was on vacation.  But now, with newly-weds and nearly-deads being about the only ones around I would have expected a big drop in prices.  Not so.  It seems there are enough of them to keep everything full and the demand high.

Cyndee kept looking and moved as far away as Williams, AZ, a town about an hour's drive to the park entrance and billing itself as "Gateway to the Grand Canyon".  The prices were still too high for the quality of the accommodations but at least they were under $200/night.

Williams is a sleepy little town of 3,000 in which Route 66 was still the active highway for going west or east until 1984 when I-40 finally bypassed it.  Williams kept Route 66 alive through a series of lawsuits that prevented I-40 from being completed in this part of Arizona.  But agreements were finally reached and one year after the opening of the last stretch of I-40, Route 66 was decommissioned.  Despite its small size, Williams is home to Southwest Chief Amtrak route and the southern terminus of the Grand Canyon Railway.

Williams is like Winslow, AZ and Albuquerque, NM; they have done a pretty good job of recreating a nostalgic look to the main drag of town and creating businesses that are attractive to tourists.

Gas stations and car dealerships from the 40's and 50's are converted to eateries.

No matter where we go there are always murials.

While Williams was interesting, our main objective was still to be achieved.  We made the hour long trip by driving somewhat parallel to the Grand Canyon Railroad to Grand Canyon Village.  This place is WAY different than the North Rim.  Everything is a big production over here.  The roads along the rim are not open to private vehicles.  Instead, huge shuttle busses run up and down the South Rim between the village and Hermit's Rest with 13 overlook stops in-between.

Normally we are not too keen on being transported around like a bunch of livestock but in this case the shuttle really is a good deal.  To begin with it is free, or more appropriately, it is included in your entrance fee of 25 dollars.  Secondly they are frequent.  You can get off a shuttle at an overlook, spend five minutes, or an hour, and when you go back to the shuttle-stop the wait is only a few minutes at worst.  And not having to drive means I can enjoy the view too.



This map of the shuttle system is not readable in this small format but you can get an idea of the scale and complexity.

Last year we made it 30 miles to the east of the edge of this map, out to Desert View.  This year we want to get all the way to the west end at Hermit's Rest.  We parked Big Gulp at the Geology Museum parking lot and in a couple minutes were on a shuttle.  Our first stop was the transfer station from the blue line to the red line shuttles.  Once we were on the red line we were in new territory for us.  One of the biggest differences between where we had been living and working for the past five months was that on the North Rim it is rare to ever be able to see the Colorado River.  But from the South Rim it is visible from practically everywhere.

Hard to see in this little bitty picture, but that is the Colorado way down there.

A significant bit of zoom helps bring the river into view.

The above rapids are one of many of the rapids that John Wesley Powell and his crew had to pilot their wooden boats through as the first pioneers to navigate the whole of the Grand Canyon.

Ten miles in the distance lies the North Rim Lodge.  Even with some fairly powerful binoculars we could not make out any familiar structures.

What would one of my posts be without a panorama.

After a number of stops for picture taking we arrived at Hermit's Rest.  This place represents the end of the paved road but is also the jumping off point for a foot trail that leads into the canyon.  It is not a famous trail like Bright Angel or North Kaibab but it is a well used trail.

Hermit's Rest is another Mary Colter creation.  Built in 1914 as a waypoint/rest stop for tourists traveling by coach and operated by the Fred Harvey Company.  The place is named after a Canadian prospector named Louis Boucher that, around 1891, was living alone at nearby Dripping Springs and with help, essentially hand-dug the Hermit Trail into the canyon still in use today.  The building was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

Unlike other structures on the South Rim, Hermit's Rest is not a grand structure.

At first glance it looks a bit rickety, but this was by design.  This building has stood strong for 100 years.

The building may not be grand but the fireplace sure is.  The fireplace is a room unto itself and is dug back into the hillside.

 

Back at the village we strolled down to the train station.  They only run one round-trip train per day and it had already come and gone.  The place was deserted and locked up so all we could do was look in the window of the depot and take in the static display of the an old steam engine and coal tender.

 





From the depot we went back up to the village and started taking in the lodges, museums and shops.  One of our favorites was the Kolb Studio.  Two brothers built a wood-frame structure that hung out over the edge of the canyon.  The brothers operated their photography studio for decades and has endured for more than a century.  They even pioneered the use of projectors and showed films they had made of the canyon using the technology of the time, carbon arc lit projectors.

While we were there the studio was undergoing a year-long renovation project.

 The studio is now operated by The Grand Canyon Association as a book store and gift shop.  We met a couple that was operating the store that day and discovered that they too were volunteers for the association and fulltimers like us.

Cyndee out on the patio of Kolb Studio.

Kolb Studio on its perch of the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

 

Turning 180 deg and the El Tovar Hotel comes into view.  Like almost everything else in this part of the canyon, its old.  It opened a year after the Kolb Studio in 1905.

 



They used the same color paint on the inside as the outside.  It is dark in there.

No kidding, its dark inside.

 

Just across the street from the El Tovar is another Mary Colter building, Hopi House.  Built to exemplify the historical inhabitant's pueblo dwellings it was commissioned by the Harvey House Company as a market for Native American crafts.  And it still is today.

 

There were countless more shops and museums and we put a pretty good dent in getting to many of them.  There was very little down-time in our three two night adventure.  We planned on getting an early start back to the North Rim on our third day so that we could get in a helicopter tour on our way by.  But as luck would have it, the weather closed in and everything was grounded.  We are headed back to our camp host job on the North Rim and the beginning of the end of our summer assignment.  Our co-hosts will be finishing their last three days and we will start working seven days a week for awhile.