Hiking Around the North Rim of the Grand Canyon

Days 8 and 9 of my 22′ Rocky Mountain tour. So stoked for a day without DRIVING or RIDING! Just one please…

After returning from Provo, Day 8 was just a planned rest and recovery day from my first week of travels. Kanab, UT is a small town with around 10,000 people right on the border of southern Utah and Arizona. I adorably walked my mom to the library and picked up an Andy Weir book, ‘Hail Mary’, that I still need to finish. I checked every other library and book store on my trip but for whatever reason I could not find another copy of this book.

Had my hair cut to cool off a bit more inside my helmet, changed the oil and filter on the V-Strom, had fresh carrot cake and even got to break some clay pigeons at the free shooting range 5 minutes outside of town. Rural perks.

The sound with rock walls all around was… concussive.

While my parents and I tried to decide what to do on Day 9, I half jokingly said ‘Let’s see the Grand Canyon!’

My parents – ‘Well we’ve lived here 13 years and have never been in our lives.’

Me – ‘…we are going to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.’

Sometimes you have the opportunity to do something great, you know it’ll be great, everyone else says it’s great, but you just never get around to it for some reason. Like living in Northern Arizona in high school and never seeing the Grand Canyon. Or like visiting Lake Powell every summer growing up but never seeing the Grand Canyon while you are there.

Or riding motorcycles your whole life and never taking a motorcycle trip longer than like 5 days. ‘I could never do that, it’s impossible!’

Just go do the thing. You think I’m making some grand metaphor for doing greatness or making a major change in your life (which I sort of am), but in this case I’m more or less saying the equivalent of “If you live an hour away from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, just take a day off and drive the hour to see it.”

We packed the car and got the local newspaper to read on the way which had some earth shattering headlines. I hadn’t seen the news in about a week, what was I missing?!

Entering the North Rim area of the Grand Canyon, there are a lot of bison.

If you say Bison over and over enough, it starts to lose meaning. Or you feel like my parents when they said farewell to me over and over.

The North Rim, in comparison to the South Rim, is much less crowded as it takes about 3 hours to drive around the whole thing to get from one to another. The elevation is around 8-9,000ft, the air is cool, the trees are fragrant with that fresh mountain forest air, and the lodges are great.

The main lodge on the left has an incredible viewing room and restaurant.

However if you look the OTHER way from the lodge, you have an ‘Oh duh’ moment on why it’s called the GRAND Canyon.

Can you even IMAGINE what other names were suggested at the meeting back when it was founded? I can’t so I just asked Google.

Park Ranger – “Welcome to the Fit For A King Canyon!”

Park tour guide – “Before you is the SUMPTUOUS CANYON”

Park merchandise cashier – “I really hope you can find some good souvenirs from the Swanky Canyon”

Logically, as it is the Grand Canyon (I prefer to call it the Prime or Principal Canyon now), every other canyon must not be as good. Is a really bad canyon like, a crappy slice in the ground? Or could one go a step further?

Me – “That is a really inferior and unimpressive canyon.”

Park guide – “Sir that’s a mountain…”

Me – “…and yet here we are both correct in our statements!”

We did see these awesome cutaways from what we assume was the original river erosion. These were much larger than they look in this photo.

This is my version of Where is Waldo. It was a wee bit windy on this rock.

Overall I was quite satisfied by the grandness of this canyon. I didn’t need to request a refund. We hiked a few observation points, got some good photos and family keepsakes, and also checked out the cabins and other buildings around the area built up by the National Park Service.

A dutiful son, forcing my parents to hike around in summer.

My dad easily looking twice as cool as me at twice my age. I’m taking notes.

“How will everyone know when this photo was taken?”
“Oh I’ll keep a mask on my ear ha ha!”

An example of some of the hundreds of cabins they have for rent. Go Google it, they looked pretty rad. Very affordable.

After we had our fill of gigantic views of GRANDNESS, we picked up some keepsakes from the gift shop and headed home. At this point the sun was overhead and those cool morning mountain temps went away to make way for stupid hot sunny weather ugh.

I’d pack the bike up that night and prepare to ride on northwards BACK to Provo, to see a bit more family and prepare to venture into Idaho. I was feeling one more hike so I did the typical K hike in Kanab.