Mostly Cloudy with a Chance of Canyon

30 Jan 2025

The sun set on us as we drove away from Petrified Forest and approached our stop for the night, Flagstaff, Arizona. We wanted to spend a little time in town to catch up on laundry, and see some of the town. It also happened to be the town where the now-dwarf planet Pluto was discovered.

Trains

We have really enjoyed seeing all the trains in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. They've been running east and west along I-40, which we drove out to Arizona on.

Flagstaff, AZ has one of the busiest sections of rail running right through downtown. Over 100 trains a day pass through town.

Lowell Observatory sits atop Mars Hill in Flagstaff, with a dozen active telescopes and existing research being done. We arrived a bit early in the day, and as per usual for the trip we brought cold weather.

We spent some time wandering the Astronomy Discovery Center before the telescopes were opened to public viewing. There was some neat exhibits, but we apparently also bring bad tech luck, as the computers they were using in the exhibits kept crashing after we used them. It was almost enough to make us believe that we were the problem.

It turns out that the best exhibits were those made for the smaller kids. They had an air-powered rocket station where you could build and launch a rocket with control over pressure and launch angle. They also had a wall with magnetic tracks you could build rube-goldberg machines for ping pong balls to travel on. We spent longer on those two than the whole of the astronomy exhibits for older people.

Just before the introduction to the observatory by park staff and the tour of the telescopes began, we found an amazing fractal mural.

Following a short history overview of the observatory and Percival Lowell, the namesake, patron, and most avid researcher of the observatory, we were taken out to the Pluto Telescope. While it doesn't look like much from the outside, this structure is more than 120 years old and is still in working order.

Unfortunately, the telescope itself is decommissioned. The primary reason it's decommissioned is because it's an astrograph telescope, meaning that it does not have an eyepiece through the main optical path. In the case of the Pluto Telescope, they took pictures with it using large photo-sensitive plates, two feet wide and tall. The main lenses in the telescope are 13 inches in diameter.

Our next telescope was the Clark Telescope. This is a much larger telescope that does have an eye piece and they regularly do viewings of. The building looks a lot more well-put-together too.

The telescope itself has a 24 inch lens, and dwarfs the Pluto Telescope. The crazy thing about both telescopes is that due to careful balancing, they can be easily moved by a person with little force, even today.

From the telescopes we went to the Rotunda Museum, which is housed in the Slipher Building on campus which was perfect with a light dusting of snow to accent it.

Inside, we had many artifacts from the history of the Lowell Observatory, including a telescope built by the man that would eventually discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh. This telescope clearly has scrappy origins, built of parts available on the family farm in Kansas.

Across the way, another of the observatory buildings houses the main viewing telescopes when the sky isn't cloudy and grey, the Giovale Open Deck Observatory. There are 7 telescopes in there, and the whole building actually rolls back to let the telescopes view the night sky. We were very bummed we wouldn't have a clear night to come back and see it.

International Dark Sky City

Flagstaff was the world’s first International Dark Sky City due to its ordinances to minimize light pollution levels.

Since implementing the ordinance, the Flagstaff community has seen tremendous growth in its tourist industry, showing that people appreciate seeing their natural attractions without heavy light pollution. This Flagstaff model is a bright example of how communities can thrive with responsible lighting regulation.

After Flagstaff, we headed due north in search of another National Park. Welcome to Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona!

Canyon Facts

One of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long and ranging between 10 and 18 miles wide.

The temperature difference between the rim at 6,840 feet and the bank of the river at 2,200 feet can be more than 25°.

The North Rim receives the most snowfall, averaging 12 feet of snow a year with the record being almost 23 feet. The South Rim averages 5 feet of snow a year, and Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon averages just 1 inch of snow.

It was a beautiful day when we arrived, with some clouds, but great visibility of the canyon that we took full advantage of.

Rather than trying to descend our first day, we took it easy and did the best portion of the Rim Trail, the Trail of Time.

We started at 1,870,000,000 years ago with the deepest layer of rock exposed. And every 3 feet, we went 1 million years forward in time. As we walked through the years, there were examples of rocks found at the appropriate layer. Please enjoy the rock garden!

However, we didn't just get a bunch of pictures of rocks, even if it's definitely the coolest collection of photos we have so far. We also had some amazing views of the canyon along the trail.

However, we didn't just get a bunch of pictures of the canyon, we also found a friend. A buck followed us on our journey for a good 1,000,000,000 years.

But eventually he decided to leave us on the path.

As we finished up the trail of time, we managed to drag the bad weather with us, and it started snowing! Fortunately for us, the park staff was very pleased with the snow as its been dry this year and the precipitation will be good for the wildlife and help reduce the risk of wildfires.

The Trail of Time ends at the Yavapai Geology Museum, where we saw a much smaller part of the ecosystem, a chipmunk!

From there we headed to the visitor center to catch a Ranger Talk and it started snowing like crazy. You can barely see Cory approaching through the flurries.

We headed to the El Trovar hotel to get checked in and settled in, and got a recommendation to try a Prickly Pear Margarita at one of the taverns in the park. We took the recommendation and we were very glad we did. We met a Australian traveler named Connor who we had a wonderful time talking to and getting to know at the tavern.

The next morning, we decided to try our hand at hiking down the Canyon. We took the Bright Angel Trail down.

Early on, it was going well. We were worried it'd be full of ice, but there was nothing. Cory was just a bit apprehensive with the drop-offs so close.

But we made it down to the first checkpoint of the Upper Tunnel in no time.

As luck would have it, we ran into our new friend Connor shortly there-after!

He was kind enough to take a photo with a great backdrop of the canyon about 500 feet down into the canyon.

We continued descending to the lower tunnel at about 600 feet down.

At this point, the trail started getting pretty steep and we dove through the layers of rock in no time at all.

We finally reached as far down as we planned to go, 1.5 miles into the hike, and 1120 feet into the Canyon. Connor trekked on another 1.5 miles and another 1000 feet down, so we parted ways wishing him a good hike and strength for the return trip.

We slowly but surely worked our way up and up and up and up... It felt like a million steps, not a thousand. Just as our spirits were low, we found a second wind, for there was a mule train! The rangers were taking supplies down to one of the camps in the canyon, which meant 9 mules to haul the goods. Sara couldn't pick a favorite, so she took a picture of each one.

It was another hard trek up the mountain after that. The mules made it look like a breeze. But we found another fun activity to keep our spirits up. As we ascended, a trail crew set up to do some erosion control. They were clearing gutters next to the path. The method felt very unorthodox though. They cleared the path down the mountain and then they just started chucking rocks down the cliff-side!

We also found a completely frozen stream. We had to be very careful because it was completely iced over where the stream crossed the trail.

We made it back up to the top, and the clouds had really rolled in. We could barely make out the canyon at all. Sometimes the view isn't better from the top.

We took it pretty easy the rest of the day, and in the morning set off westward again, to see what other places we could drag cold and snow to.