Grand Canyon-North Rim

Even though the North and the South Rims of the Grand Canyon are about 10 miles apart "as a crow flies", it is over 200 miles to get from one to the other by road. For this reason, we went to the North Rim on our way to California and we'll be visiting the South Rim on our way back from California.

We stayed in a place called Jacob Lake, which is about 40 miles north of the North Rim. Since we arrived at Jacob Lake before lunch, we decided to look for something to do. We stopped by the National Forestry Service visitor center and got a map of the dirt roads and 4-wheel-drive roads used by the Forestry Service. This turned out to be a lot of fun. We drove over 100 miles on dirt roads and 4-wheel-drive roads that afternoon (during that time, we saw one parked car and no people).

While riding these roads we saw what we first thought was a skunk because it had a black body and a white tail. It turned out to be a Kaibab Squirrel (also known as the Silver Ghost) which is found no where else in the world except the North Rim.It turns out that this little bugger is quite elusive, and difficult to get a photograph. I did find this close-up on the web:
Sensing our disappointment at missing good shot of a Silver Ghost, this little guy approached Hannah and agreed to be photographed.
Eva snapped this shot of a dandelion. What you can't tell from the photo is that it is as big as a tennis ball. Beautiful.
Between our 4-wheel-drive trip to the North Rim and the regular drive into the Park the following day, I think we got a pretty good taste of the Grand Canyon. We're looking forward to our stop at the South Rim in a couple of weeks.











While at the North Rim, we learned that a wild fire was burning near Yosemite, which was our next destination. We have re-routed our trip to Las Vegas, where we'll try to regroup.