23 Jun 21

“Grand” is simply, seriously, insufficient an adjective to describe this Canyon. The Admiral woke up in the middle of the night feeling poorly; I finally decided she had a touch of altitude sickness. After a while, and a Tylenol, she settled down and got back to sleep. We breakfasted at the Jacob Lake Restaurant, then headed south to the Grand Canyon (North Rim) National Park, arriving at the Lodge about 10:00. I have been to the Grand Canyon at least 3 times before in my life, but always to the South Rim (which is much easier to get to). The South Rim is awesome, but the North Rim just blows it out of the water. For one thing, it is not nearly as crowded with tourists as the South Rim. Next, it is 1600 ft higher that the South Rim, so the views in all directions except north are practically limitless; you can see 100 miles to the north-east, east, south and southwest. There are hikes to suit every level of expertise and fitness (we just did the easy ones, on account of the Admiral’s bad knee) and the views just beggar description and the attempts of poor photographers like me to capture. We finally gave up on trying to get the perfect photo and just sat on the veranda at the Lodge and gawked for about an hour, watching showers progress across and along the canyon. The Lodge dining room was unfortunately booked for the night, and with the overcast, we decided that the sunset may not be worth missing dinner for, so we came on back to Jacob Lake Inn. My only regret is that we were unable to secure lodging at any of the cabins in the park (they were all booked up by the time we settled on our travel itinerary - probably a year ago). We would both like to come back here and spend a week in a cabin or the lodge, enjoying the views and taking hikes as we felt like it. We drove through a shower on the way back to Jacob Lake, but it was dry (and cool) back at the Inn, so we enjoyed an adult beverage on our patio before dinner. We heard from Roger (who we will stay with in Portland, OR on Sunday); they are predicting 108 F for the high on Sunday - yikes!!

Log = 138 miles; Sum = 1564 miles