Blog

Roy Kerckhoffs' Arizona Road Trip 2018 | Day 2

In early 2018 I went on a road trip in Arizona, driving from the Grand Canyon to Tucson, with stops at Monument Valley, Sedona, and Jerome

Tuesday 

When I woke up in my hotel in Grand Canyon Village I already felt a lot better, recuperating from the flu a week earlier. Today I wanted to drive to the east, to the Desert View Watchtower and from there exit the park on the east side. But my plan after that wasn’t clear yet. I had never seen the iconic buttes at Monument Valley and I knew they weren’t that far. Google Maps said about 3 hours. Or, I could go south to Flagstaff. Or both? I decided to first go to the Watchtower, stop at locations along the Canyon and see how much time I’d have left after that. After all, it was only 7 in the morning now.

I had breakfast somewhere in Grand Canyon Village and started driving east along the Canyon. I stopped at several location to get some panoramic shots of this magnificent canyon. I like to take lots of vertical images, in manual mode, and stitch them all together later. Sometimes I take more than one row too. 

I arrived at the Desert View Watchtower. This is a 70-foot-high stone building located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon within Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, United States. The four story building was completed in 1932. It was designed by architect Mary Colter and built by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad Company. It was designed to resemble ancient local watchtowers, which served for protection and storage of food. This tower serves as a rest top and as an aid for the visitor to better understand the past and present life of southwestern native Americans.

Visitors can climb the four stories of the tower and so did I. Numerous wall paintings of gods line the walls of the first floor. The center of the room is occupied by a snake altar, a sand painting, religious crooks and wands, carved wood figures, snake whips and a tray of sacred corn meal. The walls on the second and third floor depict replicas of petroglyphs and pictographs from the Painted Desert and other regions. The fourth floor is at a height of 7522 feet, the highest point along the South Rim.  I took several photos from the tiny windows in the walls, that have magnificent views from all around.

It was around 10 o’clock now and I reassessed my next steps. Since it was still relatively early in the day, and I really wanted to see the famous buttes at Monument Valley, that’s where I was heading next. 

Through the Painted Desert it was a pretty drive from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley. Already I spotted interesting rock formations on the way. I parked my van at the Monument Valley Tribal Park Visitor Center and enjoyed the view of the mitten buttes in the distance. I noticed roads going out between them but they were unpaved and didn’t feel too confident doing that with my loaded van.

Now it was time to head to Flagstaff. Driving south on AZ-89 I noticed Humphreys Peak in the distance. The pilot from yesterday’s Grand Canyon helicopter ride had pointed it out to us. It is Arizona’s tallest peak with an elevation of 12,633 feet. I stopped to also take a shot of it with the road in the foreground. Nice dark clouds were sculpting the sky.

When I arrived at my hotel in Flagstaff it started snowing. Little did I know that was the start of a lot of it, which I would learn the next morning.