Arizona 2012 - Grand Canyon

We took a day and drove up from Sedona to the Grand Canyon. It was cold and there was a bit of snow around, but was a beautiful day to see the canyon. There are these places where you can walk right out to the end of the point and have nothing but canyon dropping hundreds of feet on either side. They are fenced with a plexi or wooden fencing, so there isn’t too much risk of falling, but Oso didn’t know that. He went running up to the edge, poked his nose over and backed away quickly. He would NOT go near the edge the rest of the day. Wonder if he remembers falling off Gordie’s deck when he was little.

The Grand Canyon was amazing. We've been to the North Rim before...this was the South Rim. I took tons of pictures, and actually got to sit and draw for a bit while Tom took the dog on a nice long walk. The sign about using caution near the edge sounds a bit redundant, but the warden was telling us that they expect, from past experience, about six deaths a year from people falling into the canyon. Most of them are young guys who think they can get way out on the edge and show off.

I wish it was easier to upload pictures, or that I could load more on the blog... This little squirrel seemed quite comfortable spending his day on the edge of the canyon looking out into it. He posed quite nicely for me! The ravens let me get nice and close too. Wouldn't it be something to have wings and be able to fly out over the canyon.

The campground we were in was called Lo Lo Mai. It was a really pretty rural spot in a place called Page Springs about 8 miles from Sedona. The people there loved dogs and so Oso was a natural fit into their pack. They’d go running down to the creek, then play in the red dirt until they all looked like red mud puppies. Oso got a couple of outdoor showers just to clean the red off him…he didn’t like those so well!

We had talked to the owners of the campground and they said that if we climbed the hill on the other side of the road we could find some ruins on the top of the mesa. It was about a thousand feed up but didn’t look like too bad of a climb. I said it didn’t “look” like too bad of a climb. It actually turned out to be a lot steeper than it looked. Anyway, we managed to make it to the top with a few stumbles and rest stops. We thought the ruins were likely something pretty insignificant since all the ones we’d seen had been turned into National Monuments. Wrong…they were very, very cool. There were about 20 rooms in the dwelling that were clearly defined though the walls of the buildings had mostly fallen down to leave just piles of rocks between them. These were totally un-excavated ruins. You can see one of the old walls in the picture with Tom in it.

Wandering through one could imagine what day to day life must have been like. On one side of the dwelling there were several little piles of obsidian chips. We figured maybe this was where the men sat and made their arrow heads. On the other side of the mesa, were pot shards…thousands of them…perhaps this was where they stored pots of grain or water…I imagined the Indian women spending time together here creating the pots they used…maybe my anthropologist daughter can give me some hints. See if you can identify all the pot shards in this picture....there are hundreds of them, some big, some little. There was a 360 degree view from the mesa with water close by, so I can see why they chose this place to settle…it was a really awesome experience. The climb down the hill was less than awesome…Tom found the shortest route down (the steepest of course) and you can see from the picture, I had to find my own way when his way was too steep. I managed to fall, bruise a rib and scrape myself up pretty good on the rocks and cactus. I did survive though…tough old broad that I am!