Great Western RV National Parks Tour - Days 7 and 8 - Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, Vermilion Cliffs, and Grand Canyon

 Day 7:

 Left Cedar City after a leisurely breakfast and headed for Arizona.  We followed route 14 east, back towards Cedar Breaks and then south on 89 into Kanab, UT.  There we had reserved a rental car for a few hours so we could visit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, the largest no-kill shelter for companion animals in the country.  Best Friends has a goal of getting to no-kill nationwide by 2025, and their efforts have paid off, as the US has dropped from well over a million euthanasia instances to about 300,000 last year.  When we walked into the visitor’s center, we were greeted by Sven, the greeter cat, who was very friendly and appreciated a good head scratch, and 3 black and white kittens just waiting to be adopted.  All of the animals at the sanctuary (1300-1600) are adoptable – many come from hoarding situations or are surrendered by their owners; they even took in 2 dozen of the dogs from the Michael Vick dogfighting situation (and adopted out almost all of them!).  We were fortunate to grab a spot on a driving tour of the whole sanctuary as soon as we got there and were able to see Dogtown (also a tv series if you want to look it up) and the cat buildings, as well as their facilities for horses, rabbits, pigs and goats.  We had previously booked a tour of the parrot garden, so we met Zeus and Xena, a pair of African grays, and Sugar and Clancy, a bonded pair of cockatoos.  There were many cockatiels and budgies as well, and I can’t forget to mention Daisy, the Moluccan cockatoo who assisted with the beginning of the tour.  She was quite talkative, even if she was more mumbly than articulate, but also very excited to greet us!  After our time at the parrot garden, we hit the cafeteria for a $5 plant-based lunch, and then we drove around a little on our own and found the pigs!  Mom wanted a potbellied pig as a pet for a while, until I showed her how they never stay that small, no matter what the breeders tell you.  Those pigs get to 150-300lbs when full grown, but they are definitely cute when they belong to someone else.  Finally, it was time to get back on the road – we returned the rental car and headed down route 89A into Arizona.  We stopped to take some photos of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument (no visitor center) and then entered the Navajo Nation on the way to Cameron, AZ.  From there we drove west into the Grand Canyon national park (south rim).  I was driving and trying hard to pay attention to the road, but it was difficult with mom and Margo yelling “holy shit” when they got their first glimpses of the canyon!  I pulled into the next overlook so we could all get a better view, and it really is spectacular.  Words and pictures don’t do it justice – it is just so overwhelming to see it in person!  At over 200 miles long and an average of 10 miles wide, it’s larger than the state of Delaware.  After that we checked into Mather Campground and made dinner inside the RV (no campfires – extreme fire risk) and ate at the picnic table at our site.  We sat there until after dark and while we were hanging out, a female elk just strolled through our campsite about 25 feet away!  Nature is just so awesome!

Day 8:

We slept in a little this morning since we couldn’t run the generator to make coffee until 7am.  After breakfast we walked out to the campground entrance to catch the shuttle bus to the visitor’s center.  We no sooner got there when we saw the signs that the blue shuttle line was not running because of Covid.  So, I hoofed it back to the campsite and got the RV and we drove there instead.   A lot of things here are either closed or operating under revised conditions because of Covid – the neighboring Navajo Nation is still under “yellow” status as far as reopening and still requires masks.  Unfortunately, that meant the visitor’s center at the east end of the park was closed, so we walked out to one of the overlook points and started down the Rim Trail toward the Yavapai Geology Museum, where we could see the full expanse of the canyon on a 3D map, as well as identify all of the different rock layers that have been exposed through the weathering and erosion by the Colorado River over the last 5-6 million years.  We walked the rest of the Rim Trail, following the Trail of Time, which maps out the different types of rock formations in the canyon and how old they are.  We walked 2 billion years of geologic history in a mile and a half.  On a sidenote, it was well into the 90s again today, and it still doesn’t feel like the soupy mess we would be feeling at home. It was hot, for sure, but we had equipped mom with a cooling towel and vest, and that really helped.  We followed the trail to the Verkamp’s visitor’s center, which was open, and then took a few more shots of the canyon, especially the Bright Angel Trail that descends into the canyon.  I can’t imagine hiking a mile down to the bottom, but there were people on it every time we looked.  We found a restroom and a water bottle filler at the El Tovar hotel and then got a quick lunch from the food truck nearby.  While we were eating, we met Irma and Lorraine, sisters who were exploring together.  Irma was 69 years old this year and lives in Brooklyn – she has a host of physical ailments and was wearing a back brace and using a walker, but that didn’t stop her!  I think she wore Lorraine, who was from DC, out.  Maybe we’ll see her around Baltimore someday – her son lives there and she’s thinking about moving since there’s no one left in Brooklyn for her.  After lunch, Margo and I walked back to the first visitor’s center to pick up the RV – mom was too pooped to walk back in the heat.  We took the Greenway bike trail instead of the Rim Trail, which at least had some shade.  When we picked mom up, we drove out to the Desert Watchtower, about 25 miles east of the main village, which we had passed up on the way into the park.  It’s an impressive building, designed by Mary Colter and opened in 1932 – Colter was one of a very small number of female architects working at the time, and was known as the Architect of the Southwest.  The Desert Watchtower is a 70-foot-tall stone tower on the edge of the canyon, and Colter studied many examples of Native American structures before designing the tower, using those examples as inspiration for something completely new.  It’s an impressive structure with a 40-foot-diameter kiva room and a spectacular view of the river at the bottom of the canyon.  From there, it was back to the campsite to relax in the hammock – three more elk walked through! – and make dinner.  Tomorrow we will be on the way to Moab, UT, with, hopefully, a stop at Natural Bridges National Monument.