Sunrise, beach and Balanced Rocks

Friday October 17

Up early to go outside for the sunrise, not as colorful as I hoped it would be.

A morning walk - I drove down to a parking area near the beach on the Colorado River and walked as far as I could in both directions until I ran out of beach and encountered the high canyon walls. 

Driving in yesterday, I passed by an area of balanced rocks and this morning I stopped to take pics on my way out. 

Balanced Rock 

Glen Canyon Recreation Area 

"Thousands of years ago a huge boulder of conglomerate broke from the cliff above and rolled to a stop here. Since then at least 6 feet of this slope has eroded away. Ultimately, the softer rock now protected by the umbrella of harder conglomerate will erode and the boulder will topple again to the ground." 

I walked all around this field of very tall boulders, luckily there was no movement of rocks. Don't think I would want to be near here during an earthquake. 

Well, its only around 8:30am at this point and I still have some driving to do heading toward the south rim of the Grand Canyon with no reservations for the night (Oct 17th with close to freezing temps possible overnight at the higher elevations).   

Several more posts are needed to try and catch up on this trip and my current location. 

Lees Ferry

There was a typo in the last post for the years the bridges were built, this has been fixed. 

Thursday, October 16

"Lees Ferry is the only place in Glen Canyon where visitors can drive to the Colorado River within over 700 miles of canyon country. A natural corridor between Utah and Arizona, it is the very start of the Grand Canyon." (Nps.gov)

 

Lees Ferry Campground does not take reservations but I could see empty sites as I drove past. When I arrived I went to the day use area first, it was too early to set up camp. 

Today I went from an elevation of over 8000' at the North Rim to 3210' at Lees Ferry (in only 85 miles) and the temperature has increased, its very hot here during the day. 

Changed out of jeans and long sleeve shirt into shorts, tshirt and hiking sandals so I could walk along the river trail and find a bit of shade to sit and enjoy the river scenery.

The campsites are $12, no hookups, on a cliff overlooking the Colorado River.  There were several empty sites and I was lucky to get a large site with a view of the river. 

Temps cooled down in time to sit outside and watch the sunset 

I tried out my "Solo Stove" to heat water for tea, it uses twigs for fuel. 

If it was cooler during the day I would have stayed more than one night. I really wish I had stayed longer - it was so calm and peaceful even with more than half of the campsites occupied.

--------------------

Still experimenting, using the iphone to write blog posts. 

I had a spam comment on the last blog post but the Blogger app does not let me get into the dashboard to mark comments as spam or delete them. 

Can't insert links or do any changes to the blog design with this app.