The Grand Canyon To Ourselves

Our epic road trip started with Elvis in Vegas, then took in Utah’s great National Parks and a bohemian chill-out in New Mexico. How to end it in style? Why, with a cruise down Route 66 and a Grand Canyon adventure, of course...

UP in the Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico we sat incongruously in a Bavarian beer garden drinking imported Spaten with a Native American casino boss from Tulsa, Colorado. His in-laws had a condo nearby – “My family get down here often in the summer. It’s only 12 hours from Tulsa.”

“So not 24 then,” I blurted. He chuckled politely. Oh, how inescapable are those great American songs rhapsodising the freedom of the road and the evocative places along the way where love can be found – or lost.

Bavarian style in Taos Ski Country – "12 hours from Tulsa"

The Gene Pitney classic’s my fave, but I can handle By The Time I Get To Phoenix, say. We could have got to Phoenix if we were to stray south from Route 66, but the plan was to head north from Flagstaff, Arizona in search of the Grand Canyon. Not easy to miss, as it turned out.

We had left New Mexico, skirting Albuquerque, on Interstate Highway 40 – the flat, straight blacktop that was supposed to demote the legendary Route 66 to a mere backroad. But, of course, the much-covered song and the iconic image live on, albeit a mite cheesily.

Altogether now: “If you ever plan to motor west, travel my way, the highway that's the best. Get your kicks on Route 66!” When journeyman songwriter Bobby Troup (previous hit Snootie Little Cutie) penned this ditty in 1946 did he ever imagine its future mileage?

In April I had stood on Adams Street, Chicago, in front of the Arts Institute, starting point of the 2,500 mile highway which runs south then west all the way to Los Angeles. Did I ever imagine three months later I’d be rejoining it in a place called Winslow, Arizona. Cue another song, another legend.

Winslow Arizona, an Eagles tribute site

First track on The Eagles’ eponymous 1972 debut album was Take It Easy. One line,  “Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona” put the town on the map. A girl in a flatbed Ford slows down to take a look at a horny hitchhiker who dreams that her sweet love might save him. I don’t expect it ended well... but a legacy remains.

On the corner of KInsley Avenue and 2nd Street on Route 66 you can pose with a statue of the hitchhiker, backed by a mural of the lusted-after Ford girl... oh and across the road buy a tee-shirt in the gift shop.

Sweetcorn and black bean soup at La Posada, Winslow

We decamped to Winslow’s memorial of better times – the Posada Hotel, a wonderfully elegant, restored 1930s hacienda. It was the last great railway hotel built along the Santa Fe line. Freight traffic still thunders past. We lunched in the Turquoise Room restaurant where much-travelled Hartlepool-born chef John Sharpe has won huge acclaim for his interpretations of South Western cuisine and Slow Food. A swirled soup of black bean and corn was simply exquisite. As was Winslow itself, surprisingly – a sleepy, dream America heirloom strip.

Legendary Venue on Route 66 at Flagstaff

Other Route 66 Arizona towns yell their allegiance more stridently. Holbrook boasts a restored 1950s motel called Wigwam Village where you can stay in concrete tepees, while Twister’s diner in Williams is crammed with road memorabilia and a vintage soda fountain. In Flagstaff the Museum Club is a legendary Route 66 roadhouse that has hosted acts such as Willie Nelson. Midweek it had the feel of the taxidermy museum it once was.

Historic hotel in downtown Flagstaff; below, the other side of the tracks

The rest of Flagstaff was a different matter. You can see why it’s regularly voted one of America’s best places to live. The frontier history’s all there downtown, straddling the rail line, but a university presence gives the leafy sprawl a lively, sophisticated feel. The Lowell Observatory – famous for the first sighting of Pluto – is its star attraction (www.lowell.edu). Best of all, Flagstaff has the mountains on its doorstep.

From the balcony of our delightful B&B, Starlight Pines, we looked out on Mount Elden, while 10 miles north lay Arizona’s highest point, 12,633ft Humphreys Peak. We could still see it from our final destination 200 miles to the north – the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Starlight Pines B&B In Flagstaff

That distance is by road, long and winding one. As the crow flies it’s much closer but there’s the little matter of the World’s Greatest Chasm in the way.

The drive took us more than four hours, first along a bleak Highway 89, then on 89A in the sparsely populated area know as the Arizona Strip where members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latterday Saints still defy US law by practising polygamy. There’s obviously little else to occupy your days.

Our teetotal barmaid in the Lees Ferry Lodge

Crossing the Colorado River gorge, a stark beauty returned around Vermilion Cliffs (they are just as it says on the packet) and we stumbled upon an unexpected oasis. The Lees Ferry Lodge is a squat roadside shack with rooms and a restaurant – oh and 100 international bottled beers to choose from, including, bizarrely, heather ale from Scotland. Plus a barmaid, who gave up the booze after one too many Buds in 1990!

The Colorado winds into the Grand Canyon immediately below the South Rim, which attracts the vast bulk of Canyon visitors and their cars. The rugged pioneer instinct in us craved the North Rim, 1,000ft higher, 10 degrees cooler and offering comparative solitude, so we went the extra miles.

Pioneer log cabins at the North Rim

Little prepares you for what you are to experience as you turn off at Jacob Lake (there is no lake there, oddly) and head towards the Park. We were staying at the Canyon Lodge North Rim in one of their medium-range “Pioneer cabins”. Luxury doesn’t enter the equation; the reason you are roughing it there is their proximity to The Edge.

Canyon Lodge, North Rim overlooks the chasm

It was tempting after check-in just to pull up a chair and a margarita and take in the awesome immensity from the perched Lodge terrace, but only minutes away is perhaps the best view of the Canyon – Bright Angel Point.

Angel's Point – perfect photo opportunity. Just don't look down

The half mile paved trail is along a narrow finger of rock, offering switchback views of spires and buttes and side canyons and, 11 miles of fresh air away, the sweeping curtain of the South Rim.

Then sunset came upon us and we were overwhelmed by the bewildering beauty of it all. Minute by minute different aspects came into a focus in a riot of ochre and rose and constantly mutating shadows.

In our 2,500 mile road trip we had been thrilled by all manner of geological wonders from the grotesque pink spires of Bryce to the film-familiar mesas of Monument Valley and much in between. But the Grand Canyon is the mile-deep big daddy, its sedimentary layers exposing two billion years of the earth’s history. I still feel dizzy at the memory.

Wildflower meadow on the Widforss Trail; below, timber rings

It would have been good to take the ultimate path down into the very different microclimate of the Canyon bottom. But the prospect of the vertiginous 14-mile Rim to river North Kabab Trail, via the Roaring Springs waterfall to the Phantom Ranch, was just too daunting for a single day trip.

One alternative might have been to let a mule take the strain. Accompanied mule treks can be booked at the Lodge. They range from simple hour rides to a half-day inner Canyon trip ($80) descending 2,300 ft.

Restaurant in the Grand Canyon Lodge; below, the view from the picture window

We had a family birthday to celebrate, so we settled instead on a saddle sore-free picnic ramble along the Widforss Trail to be followed by champagne and dinner (surprisingly good) in the Canyon Lodge’s panoramic dining room.

The Widforss, named after a Swedish/American landscape artist, is a 10-mile track through a constantly changing landscape of deep forest, sporadic Rim’s edge views and almost Alpine flower-filled meadows. Blue skies and vast billowing cloudscapes, seen  through the branches of trees old as time, and only a handful of cagoule-clad intruders upon our immense solitude. Now that’s the way to get your kicks.

To read about the first three legs of Neil Sowerby’s South West States road trip visit
Viva Vegas, Elvis And Us
Rugged Road Tripping In Utah
New Mexico – Adobe Boho And Arabian Nights