Grand Canyon - Colorado River

The car was left in the hotel car park today as the whole day was spent on an organised tour (including hotel pickup) to the Grand Canyon Cavern and jeep drive down the Peach Spring Canyon to the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

First stop was Seligman, on the original Route 66. When the I-40 Interstate Highway was built in the 1970s, the locals feared the town would disappear with no through traffic. Two brothers, who owned businesses in the main street, petitioned the government to designate Route 66 an historic road making it a tourist attraction. The petition was successful and the town is thriving with many quirky shops such as the one below, apparently still owned by one of the brothers who saved the town.

Seligman was the inspiration for the town Radiator Springs in the Disney-Pixar movie Cars.

Next stop was the Grand Canyon Cavern. This is a significant distance from the Grand Canyon (2 hours drive from the Grand Canyon Village) and has a colourful history as a privately owned tourist site. Unfortunately, the cave is disappointing. It's a dry cave, as the guided tour commentary repeatedly points out - less than 6% humidity means no bacteria or mould can survive - but this also means there are very few cave formations commonly found in wet caves. The commentary makes a big deal of cave conservation and how the poor tourism practices of the past have damaged fragile formations but the latest tourist attraction at the cave is a fully functional "hotel room" that can be booked for a night in the cave. The hotel room is built with walls about a metre high and no ceiling so the guests have the feel of sleeping in the huge Cathedral Cave - cute idea but a giant eyesore for the rest of the cave visitors. There are two points of interest in the cave. The first is the stockpile of emergency provisions stored here during the 1962 Cuba missile crisis. Apparently a number of caves across the country were designated as nuclear fallout shelters with sufficient water, food and medical supplies for 2000 people for 2 weeks - and it's still there! The second is the evidence of a skeleton of a Giant Ground Sloth that fell into the cave about 14,000 years ago and the scratchings on the wall above the skeleton are hypothesised to be from the animal trying to climb out.

The highlight of the tour though was the drive down to the Canyon in open jeeps. The road runs through the Hualapai Indian Reservation from the town of Pearl Springs, down Pearl Springs Canyon and Diamond Creek to the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. A permit is required to drive this road.

Pearl Springs Canyon

The river was a deep reddy-brown colour from the rain run off from the last few days.

 Colorado River, upstream

 Colorado River, downstream

Rock formation known by the locals as "Snoring Indian" 

Being late in the afternoon, the drive back up Pearl Springs Canyon showed the canyon in a very different light from the down trip.

Tomorrow, back to LA via Hoover Dam.