Day 9, Wed. Apr. 30, Grand Canyon South Rim



The Valle airport courtesy car.  The story here is that we couldn't reserve a hotel in advance from our previous location (Tuweep), but we knew we could get a room in Valle on a weekday with no prior reservation, but there are no rental cars at Valle, but Tom at the Valle airport said, if you come on a weekday and buy fuel, you can use our courtesy car to go to the Grand Canyon.  Sounded good to us!  Note the license plate.

I took about 60 pictures on this day.   I'll try to show just a few...We went to every overlook point!  I especially liked the western part where you have to ride a shuttle that stops at each overlook, or you can walk along the rim the entire way.  We did a mixture of both, walking along some parts, and riding the shuttle on some of the long stretches.  We reached the last point right at sunset, then rode the shuttle back and rushed back to Valle to prepare for tomorrow's trip.




Desert View Watch Tower, designed by Mary Colter in the 1930's.  This is on the far eastern edge of the road, where there are also restrooms and stores.  



The walls inside the watch tower were covered with paintings.  Very neat.



It cleared off beautifully in the afternoon.  It couldn't have been more perfect weather.  There's a plateau point trail going off in the lower middle part of the picture.  We are tempted to try that some day.  But it is only a fantasy at this point.  

A bunch of viewpoint pictures follow: