To the Grand Canyon

Looking North from Desert View

Today was primarily a travel day. We headed toward the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (but didn’t stop there) and then along the Vermillion Cliffs, over Marble Canyon on the bridge that crosses the Colorado River and finally into the East Entrance of Grand Canyon. We stopped at Desert View Watch Tower to get our first glance of the Canyon. From here, you can see the Colorado come into the Canyon. Unfortunately, due to a forest fire, there is a lot of haze over the Canyon and so it wasn’t as crisp as we’ve seen it in the past. The tower itself is an interesting piece of architecture, it’s a modern structure, but gets a lot of its inspiration from Indian dwellings of the Southwest. 

Desert View Tower

We also paid a quick visit to the Tusayan Ruins and Museum. The ruins weren’t as good as what we saw at Anasazi State Park, but the small museum was quite interesting. We stopped at a few other viewpoints before reaching our campsite at the Kaibab/Ten X campground about 4 miles south of the park. (Once again, the park campgrounds were full.) But this is a spacious campground with lots of paved pull-through sites for trailers.