We decided to eat the snacks and produce for breakfast before going out for both lunch and dinner. Having three meals out felt expensive and unnecessary.
I wrote out the time and subject for all of the ranger talks for the day on our map. At 9am, not far away, was a fossil talk. Not a bad way to start the day! I was also very excited for a condor talk later in the day, and I immediately tried to ID all the turkey vultures as condors.
The fossil talk met at the Bright Angel Trailhead. Having read all of Marguerite Henry’s books, I was familiar with the trail because of “Brighty of the Grand Canyon” - another reason I was also excited to see the mule paddocks at some point.
Our ranger told us the lightning storms were bad and to take covers, and he was the first to teach us the “rule of thumb.” If you can’t fully cover up the animal you are looking at when you line it up with your thumb, fully extended, you are too close - for ground squirrels and for elk.
We heard about the layers of the canyon, and that we were on old sea bed. He let us loose on some rock shelves with identification guides, and Alisa and I found shells and the burrows of tunneling creatures. Success! We could be paleontologists.
I asked the ranger how to identify condors before we left for a walk along the canyon. Condors have white along the top of their wing, then black along their flight feathers. A turkey vulture is much smaller and has black underneath along the bone of their wing and white at the edge.
Equipped with that knowledge, we started walking along the “Trail of Time.” We were walking uphill, yet each little trail marker had a later and later time period, in millions of years. What is crazy is that the canyon documents half of the world’s history - nearly three billion years!
We stopped at the first two lookouts along the “Red” bus line by walking before taking advantage of the bus. At roughly the third lookout, we climbed down a set of stairs to be along an outcropping, inside the canyon. What comes soaring beneath us but a condor!
My regret from this day is that we were close enough to read the numbers on its tag, but we didn’t write them down! I thought, afterwards, it was 27. Alisa thought it was 70-something. I did snap a picture though!
We continued along most of the stops of the tram. One stop was just three benches, and everyone else who jumped out immediately jumped back in the bus. Alisa and I got to enjoy the canyon alone for the ten minutes before the next bus.
We hopscotched along the south rim of the canyon like this until reaching Hermit’s Rest just after noon. While we walked past other buildings by our lodge, the name Mary Colter had stood out as an architect whose stone-driven style I enjoyed. And here was another of her creations, emerging from the rock like it grew there.
There was just a snack counter, no cafeteria to speak of, so we popped into the gift shop, hit the head, then took the tram ride back to the Bright Angel trailhead. In looking at the description of the restaurants in the Village, we liked the sounds of the Arizona Room. When we found it, attached to the Bright Angel Lodge, it was very different than the upscale description. The kitchen was exposed, like in a cafe, and the decor was kind of old and sad. The food wasn’t great, but the people watching along the canyon rim was fun.
Fun fact - everything “Bright Angel” was named after a stream that the explorers had seen emerging from the side of the canyon... like a Bright Angel?
We hadn’t visited the official visitors center yet, and a tram stop right outside got us on the right line to ride there. I saw the mules in their pens from the bus and was satisfied.
The bus driver told us that a twenty minute movie showed at the top and bottom of every hour. At 4:30, there was a geology talk, so I wanted to see if we could make that as well. So we risked it and sat down for a watch. There were grand vistas and a deep narrator, and I’m sure that when I was watching it, I learned and enjoyed it...
But, on to geology. We hopped on a bus and made it to the museum, where our geologist ranger was just hanging out. She walked us 400 yards down the canyon, and we sat at an amphitheater and talked about the swampy layer and the shallow ocean layer and the creatures that have been discovered in each. We walked back to the geology museum for a quick look around.
With that learning done, it was time to walk back to the visitor’s center. The overlooks on the canyon in the late afternoon light were stunning, so we got very distracted taking pictures. Before I realized it, we were going to be late for the condor talk back at the Village!
We got back, hopped on a bus, and it just so happened that that bus passed an elk and her calf! More great wildlife!
That made up for the fact that we were fifteen minutes late to the talk, but there was still 45 minutes of answering questions and story-telling. The ranger had a book from the library about condors and their captive breeding program and reintroduction. Passages about watching a young condor plunge from the nest and just barely recover to prevent a crash landing. About the first egg in captivity. And about seeing them back in the wild.
Afterward, we told her that we’d seen a tagged bird, and she showed us the sheet with the numbers. There was no number 27! We guessed at another number (23? 73?) and I just took a picture of the whole sheet. Opportunity lost.
We hung out on the rim outside El Tovar for sunset, which wasn’t as spectacular as the day before (and we missed out on multi-tasking with happy hour at the same time). Alisa went off to buy a puzzle, and I went back for a change and a phone charge before our dinner reservation.
The dining room was old wood and antler chandeliers. It was gorgeous, and a bottle of red wine was definitely on the table - literally?
Just after we ordered, a critter started running around the beams. It was like a red panda! I forget the name of the creature, but apparently three of them live in the attic and pop out for dinner service to ask for people to share. They get shooed back up along the rafters.
We had salads and shared a super good cheese plate, because on the way in was the table of desserts.
I was so torn on which dessert I wanted, but settled on the flourless chocolate cake. I nearly gave up - it was so rich and delicious.
It was our final night in that one bed - again, fat and happy so, thankfully again, slept well and didn’t disturb each other.
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