Adventures in Grand Canyon, part 1

The Grand Canyon. It seems like such a simple name. A lot of the really famous natural wonders out here in the west are like that: Arches National Park (with its many arches), Monument Valley (not a true valley, but it contains monument-like buttes), Sunset Crater (red rock makes it look like it’s lit by a setting sun), Meteor Crater (it’s a meteor crater). But the Grand Canyon seems like it should have a more grand name. Matt heard something a long time ago about someone calling it “The Amazingly Big Hole.” That doesn’t quite cut it either. Maybe simplicity is best. After all, it is a grand canyon…

From Flagstaff there are two highways leading north. There’s US 180 going northwest and US 89 headed just east of north. Both of these connect to State Road 64 which travels along the canyon rim for part of its way. At that point it’s called (most appropriately) Canyon Rim Road. The plan was to make a big counter-clockwise circuit. We’d go north on 89, turn onto 64, see the canyon, enter the park from the east side, work our way to the “main” views from the visitor center, then head back to Flagstaff on 180. This is what we ended up doing too, but the day wasn’t quite as we imagined it.

We got out of the hotel in good time. We usually sleep late, but we knew there would be so much to see. The road north of Flagstaff heads through some fairly bleak country. Flagstaff itself seems perfectly verdant but just to the north things get barren. It must be the dryness. It’s not exactly hot at that point. It certainly wasn’t while we were there. For those of you that have read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, we were thinking a lot about Mid-World. For those of you that haven’t read it Mid-World is some kind of post-apocalyptic landscape (long post) that is primarily cold, dry and empty. That’s north Arizona: cold, dry and empty. Shortly on the heels of these thoughts came the cynical idea: “That’s why we gave it to the Indians!” Indeed, part of US 89 passes through the lands of the Navajo Nation. Maybe it looks different in springtime, but there doesn’t appear to be much anyone could do with that land. The main industry of which we saw evidence was hawking jewelry, blankets and jerky at road-side stands.

Almost as soon as one turns onto 64 from 89, one starts to see evidence of the Canyon. At first it’s a branch of Grand Canyon that is apparently called Dead Indian Canyon. There are several scenic overlooks along this stretch of 64. We stopped at one. The drop from the rim was “only” 1,000 feet. Maya, who had seen Grand Canyon before wasn’t that impressed. For Matt, it was probably the most “amazingly big hole” he had yet seen. He was pretty impressed. A handy picnic table served as a tripod to get a shot of us together. We also glanced at some of the jewelry on display. One Navajo lady asked us if we were on the way up or down. We weren’t sure what she meant. We thought we were on the rim on the canyon. We were just going to go over to the park. No. We had yet to go up to the rim. Apparently, as you go north from Flagstaff’s 7,000 feet above sea level the land dips down to 5,000 some feet. It was gradual and we didn’t really notice. Now that we were so close to the South Rim we had to get back up that 2,000 feet in short order. The road ahead was very steep.
It was on this climb up to the rim’s 7,438 feet above sea level that we first thought there might be something wrong with our car. Our Rav4 had always made a lot of noise. It has been better since we had all that work done in Florida, but still loud at times. The engine makes so much noise. Going uphill has always been worse. On this hill we noticed that the car was really loud, not just normal loud. We realized that it had been making extra engine noise since we had first headed north. Matt had a theory about the thinner air making the fuel injector work less effectively. He didn’t really put much stock in it, but it seemed possible. Driving up to the rim, he thought maybe the transmission was slipping. It might not have enough transmission fluid, he thought. Our combined knowledge of cars if feeble at best and this seemed as likely a possibility as any. There’s no place to stop on that stretch of the road so we just went on into the park.

For twenty-five dollars a vehicle you get seven days of access to the Park. That seems like not too bad of a deal. There’s a picture on the website for Grand Canyon National Park that shows all four entrance lanes packed with cars. It didn’t look like that when we there. We were the only car passing through the gate at the time. This close to winter, it’s the off-season of the park. That being said it was still fairly crowed everywhere we went. It must be completely wall-to-wall (or is that rim-to-rim) in the height of tourist season! Our first stop was the Desert View Area on the east side of the park. There’s a Watchtower there that was one of the first tourist stops to be built at the canyon. The tower was built in the 1930s and its style is supposed to emulate the watchtowers of the Anasazi. The views from the ground there are amazing enough. It’s the highest point on the South Rim. Then on top of that you can go up in the tower at look out of the windows at the top. Amazing. When we got back down from the tower and tore ourselves away from the vistas we had lunch in the car. Matt put some transmission fluid in the car and then we were off to the next stop.
Driving to the Tusayan Ruin there was still a lot of noise from the engine. Of course at Grand Canyon you are almost 100 miles from the nearest real service station. No matter what the problem, there isn’t much you can do other than to keep going. The Tusayan Ruin is a small dwelling site. There were maybe 30 people living in four small connected rooms. There are several storage rooms, evidence of agriculture in a nearby stream basin and the remains of a kiva for ceremonies and meetings. This site has provided the earliest evidence for human habitation is the Park. Clovis points have been found at the site, indicating human activity in the area as early as 17,000 years ago. The people who built the structures that remain today were much more recent. The dwelling was in use up until about 800 years ago. There was a small museum next to ruin that exhibited many of the finds from all over the park. There are over 2,000 artifact sites in the 3% of the Park that has been officially explored. Wow! How many more artifacts remain to be found? Later in the visitor center we saw a reconstruction of Tusayan. After looking at the museum and such Matt was thinking about the car and decided that the pistons might be knocking around a bit if the car was low on oil. We checked this when we got back to the car. It did need oil. Quite a lot. Matt put in one and one half quarts. He insists on keeping all this stuff in the car. It’s something he learned from his Dad. It’s usually a nuisance to have all those bottles in the back end, but when you need it, it’s nice to have it.

Our next stop was at Moran Point. At 7,160 feet above sea level it’s a lower point on the South Rim. On the way the car was still making a lot of noise. Putting in the fluids didn’t seem to change the sound in any way. We began to suspect an exhaust issue, but the sound seemed to be from the front not that back. From Moran Point you can see how red Arizona is. When we were ready to leave Maya walked around the car with the engine running. She confirmed that the terrible, explosive rattling we were hearing was coming from the front end of the car. It was something to do to with the engine…
Shortly after leaving Moran Point we found out exactly what the matter was. We were driving along the twisty two-lane road, going slow lest we overtax the engine. Suddenly, clunk then scraaaaaaaaaa. Yes. The muffler fell off! Off! In, essentially, the middle of nowhere. We stopped. There isn’t really a place to stop on the side of the road there, just a little bit of gravel on the edge of the road. Thankfully, this was no where near the edge of the Canyon. Matt got down and looked at the damage. The muffler had fallen off on the front side. The muffler itself looks perfectly okay, but the pipes that connect it to the engine were rusted through. Rusted right off. A car makes a lot of noise when it doesn’t have a muffler!