The Grand Canyon was part of our eight-day destination road trip. We ruled out driving from Texas to Arizona. It was fun seeing a lot of interesting places in Austin, Texas, like Hamilton Pool, but we needed to be in Arizona the next day. We opted flying out of DFW airport to Phoenix, Arizona. A red-eye flight was the best option but was surprised by the number of people waiting to board the plane. I guess the fear of covid19 was out and travel was in. We were walking around downtown Phoenix, Arizona in no time. The dryness and heat were most noticeable. Texas was feeling cooler and more humid. We were not used to this kind of heat and humidity.

We reached the Grand Canyon by driving to the northwest corner of the State of Arizona and into the confines of several National Parks. I bought an annual pass since we were thinking of visiting more national parks in the future and as my way of contributing to the maintenance of national parks. Describing the canyon – as a steep-sided canyon that was carved by the Colorado river over time – was indeed accurate. It was humongous! My eyes hurt trying see the “big picture”.

We chose to drive the 26-mile road along the south rim going to Desert View. There were several lookout points that allowed us to park and view the canyon. The view at the first stop was already overwhelming enough. We didn’t know whether to just sit and continue to stare at the canyon or move on to the next lookout point. Of course, we ended up moving on the next lookout to get the most out of the experience. Soon, everything started to look the same. It took a while longer than the usual park-and-look to tell the difference in character of each lookout.

The last stop was at Desert View lookout and it was here that we saw the Mary Coulter’s Desert View watchtower . The watchtower had an interesting history attached to it. It was too bad that we didn’t get to see the inside of the watchtower. There were too many people milling around and we didn’t feel comfortable enough to mingle too close.