Grand Canyon - Part 2

We continue to the Grand Canyon. Our route takes us, among other things, on the Schnebely Hill Road. Again very demanding, but with an incredibly beautiful place. Despite the rain coming again and again, we stay 2 nights. We look at fascinating rocks, have a wonderful sunset and are looking down at the city of Sedona from 5990 ft.While we are sitting here, we wonder what else the Grand Canyon could offer us now. Since there is also a vista point here, bookable jeep tours with tourists come by - for us it is almost like watching TV ☺️.

Friday July 16. We break our camp and drive the rutted, rocky and sloping Schnebely Hill Road to Sedona. We can only do this at walking pace, and the tourist jeeps, in red, yellow or pink overtake us a few times and delight our van by screaming loudly. Sedona is practically the heart of these surrounding canyons and thus a tourist hotspot. So we just shop quickly and head to the nearby Red Rocks Secret Mountain Wilderness in the Coconino National Forest. We are just setting up the awning when it is almost torn from our hands by the sudden storm. So put it back quickly and watch the heavy weather from the van. Not to bad 😊 we are happy anyway, because today Prime Minister Trudeau announced that the borders with Canada will open in mid-August. Yayyyy! (Thanks to Tina ☺️ for sending us this message).

Anyhow, Joss needs new trekking sandals. His Tevas are now around 15 years old and can therefore be renewed. There is a Rei shop in Flagstaff, where Joss is  lucky and finds some new ones. Then we try to quickly get an iced coffee - down here, so no longer in the woods above 4500 ft, it is pretty hot. We find Lunds Canyon Coffee and when we want to order, the owner turns out to be a German from Potsdam. We gossip a little bit and are holding up the business ☺️. Anyway, a nice encounter and we wish the guys who have only been open for 5 weeks, every success for the future. Then back out of Flagstaff and into the woods. We are now so close to the Grand Canyon that we can almost smell it, just not see it yet.

Monday, July 19th - yes, we are there - at the Grand Canyon !!! We had already bought the entrance ticket for the Grand Canyon National Park online, so we drove through the forest from our camp in the Kaibab National Forest and suddenly stood at a viewing platform. Massive, impressive, hard to believe, heroic, incomprehensible, imposing, beautiful, gigantic, impossible to put into words. This is roughly how you can describe these canyons. We are completely fascinated. And now we can understand the people who tried to describe it to us before and kept saying that it was going to be a unique experience. That's it! Since you can't just camp here, we go to the National Park's own campsite and then explore the different views by bike. We are overjoyed! Even if there are a lot of tourists here, it is not overcrowded. We are on the southern part - the South Rim. Of course we have no privacy on the campsite and it is very noisy, but also very funny to watch the neighbors. The elk in the National Park seem to have got used to the tourists. You can see them all the time near the road and in the evenings we see a herd walking across the campsite, which is why Lynda was told at the campground registration"Don't leave your hammocks unattended", otherwise the elk with their antlers could get caught in them - Joss said "Let's try that out, if we can catch an elk like this".

Und dann muss man ja auch noch Zeit haben, einfach da zu sitzen und vor sich hin zu schauen.

Astrid Lindgren

But one thing is clear, we also want to go to the other side of the canyon - the North Rim. So the next day we accept the 4 hour drive. We are not badly amazed. Even the highway leads through crazy landscapes with multi-colored canyons. Our destination is not the National Park, but a little outside in the Kaibab National Forest. Here, too, Chris recommends a great place again and that is an understatement to say the least. Here we are now, not really surrounded by people, we are on a plateau, where we just look into these incredibly deep gorges and the surrounding canyons. Even the very frightening thunderstorm last night couldn't have been better. As you know it from television ... and we are right in the middle of it.

In the afternoon, distant neighbors also come by, Guzz and Marie, former teachers from Flagstaff who call themselves camp view hunters. They are very interested in the van and our route and we get a few tips for the terrain around us. In the evening it clears up and we enjoy a wonderful sunset again.

Dear ones, these places are really worth visiting. So far we haven't been disappointed or found it boring. No matter where you drive - just great. But we would definitely like to highlight New Mexico. Desert, forest, weather and sometimes you feel like you are in the Swiss Alps. Just the thing for outdoor people like us. And of course, the Grand Canyon tops a lot 😉 we also meet super nice people again and again - Markus and Doria, for example, he is from Germany and she is from the USA. Actors, circus performers, directors, travelers and much more. For 10 years without a permanent residence, always on the road with their VW buses, currently on the way from Canada to New Hampshire with the small detour through Oregon, California and Arizona. The two have already lived a very exciting life, according to the motto "work in as many jobs as you can and live as many lifes as you can". (See also exciting links from the route)

Here, on our plateau, we will probably stay a few days and explore the surrounding area. But then other states are waiting for us and we are very excited to see what we will experience there.

Editor's note: After long and extensive research, the encounter between the wolf and Lynda might have also been just a coyote that was too big. We guess, we’ll never find out, and until then it was definitely a wolf 😅