July 19 - Visit by a Yellowstone friend

I've been blessed with a lot of good fortune through the years.  Family - for sure.  And many friends along the way as well.  So when my dad said we're going to visit the national parks out west, I had no idea how that decision would change my life. Because that trip led me to take a job in Yellowstone National Park, where I made life long friends and met Susan. During that first summer (1970) in Yellowstone, Randy Smith and I worked together at the YPSS gas station at West Thumb. Though we lost contact for a few years, we've reconnected.  And a few weeks ago, Randy and Kay visited Susan and I here in the Grand Canyon.

Starting at the Geology Museum at Yavapai Point, we took the Rim Walk about 3 miles west to Verkamp's Visitor Center.  Great views off our right side the whole way.  The Geology Museum has a 3-D map of the GC; it's the only way (unless you're in a spaceship circling the earth) to see all of the Grand Canyon at once.

I'm standing in these rocks, and that big gash in the earth behind me is called the Bright Angel Fault.

This feature is called The Battleship.  It's along the Bright Angel Trail, but the view from above is the only way to really see it.

The Bright Angel Trail goes down 3300 feet in 4.5 miles...down, down, down to Indian Gardens. That's the green, riparian area below.  The creek helps keep the cottonwood trees nourished in the desert environment. I've gotten a backcountry permit, so Susan and I are headed down there in a couple of weeks.  

For dinner, I used my "clicker" to open "The Magic Gate" and we went out to Hermit's Rest.  Another Mary Jane Colter architectural masterpiece, Hermit's Rest was designed as a rest stop at the end of the 8 mile Hermit Road...but to look like "The Hermit" had just been there yesterday.  Ms. Colter found this bell in New Mexico and built the arch specifically to hold it.  The Hermit was Louis Boucher, a prospector/miner at the west end of the Grand Canyon in the 1880s and 1890s.  He wasn't really a hermit, but that was his nickname.  So he went with it.  And it turns out there are more features in the Grand Canyon with the name "hermit" in them than any other name.  Lucky for Louis Boucher because none of his mining claims ever panned out.  But Boucher did quite well giving rides on his mule and telling visitors about the Grand Canyon.

This is the fireplace inside Hermits Rest.  At the opening of the stage stop in 1914, Mary Jane Colter had "sooted up" the fireplace and put cobwebs in the corners...again, like The Hermit had just been there yesterday.  When the executives from the Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey Company were at the dedication and saw how "dirty" the place looked, they complained to Colter.  Her response: "Gentlemen, you can't imagine what it cost to make this place look this old."  

We came back from Hermits Rest and had dinner at Mohave Point while waiting for the sunset.  We got the "hairy eyeball" from quite a number of people, wondering how we got out there with our delicious meal.  Let me just say...it pays to know people who know how to open the "Magic Gate."  

Rain started moving in from the east, creating a dark and brooding Grand Canyon. 

 Here's a panorama from Mohave Point.  

 And finally, sunset.  

Hope your weekend is a good one.