Images of Grand Canyon National Park – Northwestern Arizona, taken in May 2018.

It is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. It is awe inspiring. It is beautiful. It is overwhelming. It is a place where you can stand on its rim and look down into the canyon into another canyon, the floor of which is 3000 feet below where you are standing.

I’ve been to Grand Canyon National Park several times, always to the more accessible South Rim. This time I made it a point to plan my trip so that I could visit the more remote North Rim, however, because it is approximately 1000 feet higher than the South Rim and therefore gets more snow, it doesn’t open until May 15 each year. Because of that I went from Lake Powell to St. George Utah to Las Vegas and then back to the Kaibab Indian Reservation where I stayed in a tribal RV park as my launching point to the North Rim.

Oddly enough it was an unexpected trip from St. George to Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument where I found myself at the doorstep of a remote North Rim Grand Canyon Ranger Station at Tuweep. I had already traveled 85 miles on dirt roads to get to this point so even though I had heard horror stories about the condition of the road the final two miles to the canyon’s edge I was not going to let that stop me now…I was just too close. Well I ploughed ahead and finally reached a point that looked a little too much for my all-wheel drive Subaru, this was after all a four-wheel drive road, and yes I was about two miles from my destination. Now I was even closer and still not willing to give up so I parked the car and started walking when a large black SUV came along. I stuck my thumb out and hoped for the best. They gave me a ride, the big SUV lumbering over that last two miles, and I got to see the spectacular site that few people get to see, the Colorado River in a 3000 foot vertical gorge less than a mile from rim to rim and radically different than any other Grand Canyon viewpoint. To get back to my car I caught a ride with three guys in a 4 by 4 vehicle which took the menacing road much easier than the SUV I came in on.

So about two weeks later I took another 85 mile drive, this time over paved roads, to the more traditional North Rim. My first stop was mid-morning at Bright Angel Point followed by the 22 mile drive east to Cape Royal. Now I had always heard that the North Rim was more spectacular than the South Rim but as I completed my hike out to Cape Royal I wasn’t convinced. It was all amazing, how could it not be, but my memory of looking down into Bright Angel Canyon from the South Rim was unrivaled by anything I had seen to this point. It was early afternoon and I had a decision to make; leave in my slightly deflated state or head back to Bright Angel Point to see what it looked like now. You see I’ve learned that if you think you’ve seen everything, just go back later in the day to where you’ve already been and you’re guaranteed to see something new. I did and it proved my point; the view from Bright Angel Point was altered by the sun and the shadows…what was backlit earlier was sunlit now, and the view was indeed more spectacular than when I had seen it earlier in the day.

So after all that I still give a slight edge to the South Rim, although, as I think about it I could be favoring that view because it was my first view of this amazing place…maybe I’ll have to go back there to have another look…it’s only fair to judge it again after seeing the spectacular North Rim.