Day 17 -- Grand Canyon Village, Arizona to Kanab, Utah -- 210 Miles

Today, as an young elk wandered by our camp to bid us farewell, we finished stowing all our gear, buckled our seatbelts, and rolled out of the Grand Canyon Trailer Village headed for the park eastern exit. It's always hard to say goodbye to such a lovely, awe-inspiring place, but it was time to make way for some other family and head for our next camping spot as we continue our Spring 2025 sojourn through the wonderful southwestern United States.

The Grand Canyon Trailer Village is really great park. It may be a difficult place to secure a space, but once you do, you discover that the Trailer Village is in a wonderful spot for you to participate in whatever activities interest you. Located only about a quarter mile from the Trailer Village front gate is a grocery store and small cafe. There's plenty of parking there, even for large RVs. We stopped this morning to do some last-minute grocery shopping, and the parking lot was largely empty.

The Blue Line park shuttle comes right to the Trailer Village gatehouse, and you can jump on and ride directly to the Visitors Center. From the Visitors Center, you can catch different shuttles that will take you everywhere from the train station to the most distant outpost. There's a geology museum on one route, and a great number of scenic overlooks, and hiking destinations. That way you may hike out and ride the shuttle back when your feet get tired.

This morning, as we left the grocery store and circled around to catch Route 64, we just had to stop one more time and view the magesty of this beloved geologic oddity known as the Grand Canyon. When we arrived at the roadside overlook and parked, we could see that the canyon was covered with a purple haze that obscured much of the detail of the geology below. But just as I was about to be disappointed with the obscurred view, I heard a girl call to her boyfriend that he should take her photo after she had craweled out to the edge of an overhanging boulder.

Naturally, that was too good an "invitation" to resist. I walked to the edge of the canyon myself and watched the girl edging out onto the rock. While my photographer brain silently thanked her for wearing red, I snapped a half dozen photos to document her feat of bravery.

At that point I had to return to the rig as we were taking up about six parking spaces, and I knew that someone would be awfully disappointed if there were none left to allow them to park so they could take in the purple haze.

Once out of the park we sought out a gas station at the terminus of Park Route 64 and Arizona Route 89 north. After tanking up, we were off in search of our next adventure. Route 89 North runs into Utah, or, if you turn east on Arizona 160, you'll find yourself in Tuba City or Kayenta. Going that way, you can end up in Monument Valley where we camped several days ago.

Our destination for the night was the Grand Plateau RV Resort in Kanab which can be reached by staying on Route 89 north all the way to the town of Page near the Glen Canyon Reservoir. From Page you can continue on Route 89 through Utah in a sort of northish, westish, southish direction. Or, you can take the route we chose and take the Alternate 89 North turnoff, and it takes you along Arizona's famous "Vermillion Cliffs."

The Vermillion Cliffs are largely red sedimentary sandstone overlaid with sea-bottom limestone. In huge portions of the cliffs the very dense limestone, which at one time kept the sand and mudstone from eroding, has tumbled off and fallen to the desert floor below. Concetta and I have been in search of some limestone samples since we first learned about the geologic feature from Ranger Annie.

As you can see from the photo at left, I am holding a sample of the sea-bottom limestone and the Vermillion Cliffs form the background. Though we failed to get any nice specimens on the road out of Grand Canyon Park, our lunch stop in the photo provided us with some perfect samples. According to Ranger Annie at the Grand Canyon geology lecture, the sample I'm holding here probably dates to 270 million years ago and is bascially the remains of unimaginable numbers of sea creatures.

After lunch and the addition of several more limestone samples to our growing rock garden collection, we made our leisurely way along Route 89 Alternate toward Kanab, Utah. Although the camp, we were told, was difficult for GPS units to find for some past travelers, the camp host had given Concetta specific turn-by-turn instructions that she said would take us right to the camp office.

This was working fine until we stopped to snap a couple of photos at a Native America jewerlry sales area. Naturally, I got out to shoot whatever geologic features I found interesting, and Concetta rolled down her window to get some fresh air. At that precise moment, a large gust of wind grabbed the paper with the directons to our evening camp that she had been navigating with all afternoon and blasted them away on the wind.

All I heard as I saw the tiny note waft its way in a sort of northeast direction was a cry of anguish from Concetta. Quickly, I rounded the side of the RV to try and keep the slip of paper in sight as I walked quickly in that general direction hoping for some miracle that would allow me to regain possession of the important document.

Eventually I lost sight of my quarry, but I just kept walking in the direction that I had seen it flying. I kept scanning the red desert hoping that the white paper would stand out no matter how far away it was getting. Finally, when I was almost ready to admit that the directions slip was gone forever, I spotted something white resting against the root area of a sagebrush plant about forty feet away.

I held my breath as I quickened my pace. Could that wonderful gray-green plant, official state plant of Nevada, have reached out and grabbed the infintismally small scrap of paper as it flew by so I could catch up with it? As I reached down and grabbed the delicate thing, I was truly amazed that not only did it not disappear on the wind, but it miraculously remained within the confines of the space that I could easily reach. I didn't have to fruitlessly climb the nearby mountain, or bushwack through a rocky canyon.

After leaving the Vermillon Cliffs portion of Route 89 Alternate, we began a slow, steady climb into the forested slopes of the Kaibab National Forest. Where once we were coursing our way through hot, vermillion-colored desert, now we were climbing into the domain of the pinion, lodgepole pine, and scrub brush. The air cooled as the rig ate up the miles at higher and higher altitudes, up to 8,000 feet and higher.

As you might guess, I had to stop and stretch my legs occasionally so I spent my time capturing photos of wild flowers lining the mountain road. Route 89 Alternate is such a great way to enter Utah from Arizona that I can't recommend it enough. The traffic is very light, the scenery is incredible, and there are plenty of places to pull over and spend some time just taking in the beauty of the landscape, be it desert or mountain.

If you have plans to stay in Kanab as we did, there are at least two camps right in town. We chose to stay at the camp that's just a short distance east on Route 89 towards Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon Dam. Our camp is not as far off the highway as I would have liked, but they gave us a space that is at the back of the park and on a slight knoll where we'll be able to see the sunset.