Returning to Grand Canyon National Park and Wupatki National Monument

We left Death Valley and continued our drive south towards the Grand Canyon. We didn't arrive until about 10:30 p.m. at our dispersed campsite just a couple of miles outside of the park. It was a new moon, so it was as dark as it can be and about 20 degrees! Within a mile of leaving the main road, we found a perfect level site among some ponderosa pine trees. We parked, got everything situated, and went to sleep as we knew we had a big day of ahead.

The day warmed up quickly by the time we made it into the park and the weather was gorgeous. We brought the RV to the park so Daisy could safely rest in the main visitor's parking lot while we drove around in the CRV.

We decided to drive to the far end of the rim road at Hermit's Rest and work our way back along the canyon rim. From here, we slowed down and took in the views at most of the viewpoints. Best of all, there were relatively few people and cars - we highly recommend visiting in January versus July/August! It was very quiet, we could just listen to the silence and, in one spot, we could see and actually hear the Colorado River 5,000 feet below us.

We had stunning views and were reminded of how special the canyon is. It had been almost 20 yrs since our last visit! It should be something everyone sees in their lifetime. We spent the day taking lots of photos. Animals on this day were not very abundant: a couple of elk, deer, birds, and a very cute javelina family with babies! Javalina’s are a kind of peccary native to the SW and S. America, and are only distantly related to pigs (they aren’t the destructive wild boars we’ve heard about).

We waited for the sunset which in the winter is at 5:30. The sunset light in the canyon was gorgeous. It was a beautiful day!

That evening we had no moon and extremely dark skies. The seemingly infinite number of stars was awe inspiring.

Milky Way with Liz's iPhone 16

Star trails with the ponderosa pines

The next morning we decided that we wanted to have a new adventure vs a second day in the park so off we headed to Flagstaff and the Wupatki National Monument. We had heard it was really worth the time. It is a 25 mile drive stopping at sites where the Pueblo peoples used to reside. Up to 13 different tribes reference the importance of these 1100 A.D. ruins. It was really interesting to learn that large numbers of people had lived here over 1,000 years ago.

Note: they are doing work to stabilize the ruins from decay, thus the scaffolds.

The round structures are ball courts that have influences from the Aztecs of Mexico!

Finally, there is a neat blowhole on the property and air flows underground to another blowhole about 24 miles away. They pull air in or push it out depending on the temperatures at each site. As you can see it was blowing air today!

We had a great trip on the way to our next stop in Sedona about 1.5 hours south. Sedona has so much to offer so expect a few more photos in the next blog. We will be there for 6 days.