Bright Angel Point, Grand Canyon

Tuesday 9/4


We awoke this morning and hiked to Bright Angel point as the sun was rising.  Not too far from our campsite, just beautiful.  We sat on a bench along the way and just took in the view in total solitude.

At Bright Angel Point in the bright, rising sun

I had time to download pictures (while Nils did ALL the hitching and running around---thanks Nils) on the porch of the General Store and then we departed in the direction of Flagstaff (which I always want to call Falstaff).  We had a mission:  SOLAR POWER.  We have an appointment in Glendale (suburb of Phoenix) on Thursday to have solar panels attached to the roof of our RV, better batteries installed and a fancy-schmanz controller and volt/amp meter wired in.  After which, we hope, we can run easily charge up our batteries and actually enjoy some running water whenever we want, even when we're not "hooked up" to  a power source.  Since national and state parks seldom offer hookups at their campgrounds, this is quite important to us.  Also, we just like the idea of living off of the grid.  Seems a shame not to take advantage of all this relentless sunshine, anyway.

On the way out of the Canyon, we passed the Marble Canyon Lodge, where Bjorn and Nils spent the night before their rafting trip down the Colorado River 3 summers ago.

Nils has grown quite a bit during our trip.....

This is very close to the Navajo Bridge, which is the only bridge for about 600 miles over the Colorado River....Bjorn and Nils rafted under it (3 summers ago) and we drove over it today to continue driving south.  There were some expectant looking vultures perched underneath...hopefully they will remain disappointed, at least as far as human prey is concerned.

A slightly blurry vulture #86  (enlarged for your viewing enjoyment)

We were originally planning to stop in Flagstaff, but instead aimed for a Sedona RV park.  We got there during a rainstorm, but it was beautiful in spite of that (lots of dramatic lightning along the way as well).
Am hoping tomorrow to get within spinning distance of one of the many vortex locations around here.....we shall see.   We have a lot more driving to do tomorrow......