Road Trip - Day 7 - Kanab to Grand Canyon North Rim
Kanab, UT to North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
7:30 am, 54 degrees. Cold
Once again a cold start and once again I put on my jeans and sweatshirt at the car.
Today we are headed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Most people head for the South Rim but we like to be different.
The road we take out of Kanab is 89A, which is not be be confused with the main Highway 89. We drive through Freedonia which is just over the border in Arizona. We were on the lookout for a Starbucks but we were out of luck. Tom is suffering from withdrawal symptoms from lack of strong coffee.
Tom told me an interesting fact about towns in Utah. All of them have very wide streets and it is because Brigham Young decreed that streets should be wide enough for a oxen team to turn round in.
Arizona is one hour behind Utah even though they are both on Mountain Time because they don’t have daylight savings time. I read today though that one part of Arizona does have daylight savings time and that is the Navajo area where we will be going tomorrow. Very confusing!
The scenery has changed dramatically from the red messes of Utah to almost flat with scrub land and grass.
At 7 a.m. we enter the Kaibab National Forest which is a large pine forest and we start to climb. The undergrowth has been cleared from the forest floor and for mile upon mile we pass hundreds of mounds of dead wood looking like unlit bonfires. What a huge undertaking that must have been. And what are they going to do with all that debris? Are they going to burn it or haul it away? One huge section to the south has been burnt. It must have been one hell of a fire.
Finally we come to the end of the burnt trees but the forest continues. It looks completely different here. Among the pines there are aspens and, not only that, but there are grassy areas. It reminds me of the New Forest in England. There are also cattle grids because cattle room free here, not that we saw any. No horses either. The aspens are beginning to change color. Some are really bright yellow.
September 27 2007 | Further Afield | No Comments »
