You know the name of the biggest canyon. It’s 277 miles long by up to 18 miles wide, and about a mile deep. All we could see from our walk along the south rim ten days ago was rock — that is, when our view was not impeded by other tourists, cars, campers, shuttle buses, information centers, restaurants, and guest lodges.
Sigh. I know. I’m having no small amount of trouble with our overcrowded national parks. Remember Yosemite in July? Shudder.
Each meter of distance signifies a million years of history, so um, it didn’t take long.
By significant contrast, we decided about a week later to check out Arizona’s second largest canyon, which is Sycamore Canyon, at 21 miles long by about 7 miles wide, and about 1500 feet deep, with lots of trees and vegetation in the part we saw. For you geology types, it’s desert riparian. For those of us who simply enjoy the sound and smell of the wind rushing through branches, the place is full of fragrant ponderosa pines.
Don’t let the map’s orientation fool you. North is down, so we in fact hiked along the southwest rim.
Do we still call it a water fall if it’s dry?
I considered singing, “I ain’t got no body…” but settled for pointing it out to Tim and shouting, “Hey, Honey. Get a backbone!”
Groan
Although black bears and mountain lions are known to roam the area, all we saw were a lot of birds, and a couple of, well, we didn’t know what manner of rodents they were until we got back home to Google. But before then, it was, “Oh my god. Is that a skunk? Wait. No. It’s a… Well, damn. What is that?”
(Photo borrowed from enature.com; I wasn’t fast enough to get one of my own.)
After two weeks here in Williams, AZ, we haven’t done as much exploring as we’d hoped, due to needing to be… well, heck… I almost said “near a phone.” Seriously? When in the last decade have we not had a phone with us at all times? I guess it’s better to say that we’ve needed to stay within a strong cell signal area, and the places we like to kick around often lack that. Nothing’s wrong; we’ve just had some business matters take priority, and I’ll have news to post about that later.
“No, wait. It’s just our realtor again.” – Tim and Emily Rohrer
Always, always amusing, Emily, thanks! We’ve never seen an Abert’s squirrel either in our 2.25 years of full-time RVing! They are crazy looking! And when there’s no water in the waterfall, it’s called a “pour-off,” at least in Big Bend National Park (we found two — Burro Mesa and Window Pour Offs). Ain’t that canyon Grand!? Thanks for the tip on Sycamore. Didn’t know about that one either!
Well, you’re ahead of me: we spent nearly a week camping in Big Bend three years ago, and I failed to learn the term “pour-off.” Sheesh!
You should see its weirder cousin, the Kaibab squirrel, that lives on the other rim of the Grand Canyon. At least the Abert’s seems to have a cohesive color scheme. The Kaibab looks like it was sewn together from spare parts.
We had the same reaction as you when we saw it.
Yes, the Kaibab squirrel came up in my search too, but after I examined both versions, I determined that our critters were definitely Abert’s. “Sewn together from spare parts” is a wonderful description! Sometimes I feel that way…