The impassive silence
of the Grand Canyon
On the way from Las Vegas to Tusayan, our next stop to the Grand Canyon, crossing a small northern part of the Mojave Desert somewhere on the plateaus above Lake Mead makes our interior, however air-conditioned, a temporary oven.
The instrument panel reads 109 ° Farenheit, close to 43 ° C.
We remember that we go from degrees Farenheit to degrees Celsius (or Centigrade) by the simple equation:
° C = (° F-32) / 1.8
and conversely ° F = 1.8x ° C + 32
It is precisely when crossing the river Colorado heading south towards the Gulf of California from Lake Mead that we cross the border between Nevada and Arizona where we are now entering.
One of the rare cases in the USA where the border between two states is neither a meridian nor a parallel, but the natural contour of a river.
A few tens of miles further east, the plateau grows a little green again, becomes a short scrub, and the road dominates an immense lateral plain near the Kingman village.
A plain that trembled once perhaps the roar of galloping buffalo herds.
After having left Route 93, then fork onto Route 40, a mid-day stop unexpectedly leads us on one of the still present portions of the legendary route 66.
Here is the village of Seligman in Arizona, after leaving Nevada and its overwhelming heat.
This hamlet maintains, under the initial impetus of Angel Delgadillo the barber, a vast bric-a-brac museum with in particular vehicles recovered from bits and pieces which recalls the glorious pasts of the 30s to the 80s.
Fun and very crowded, while remaining good-natured, it has no other cultural pretension than ttat of reviving memory ; and achieves this with straightforward simplicity.
It is easy to imagine, in the middle of immense surrounding fields quickly deserted beyond a fringe of short meadow on either side of the road, the regions crossed by the initial pioneers (the 66 was not yet created), then the poors during the Great Depression of 1930, on the railway axis which passed there since 1866.
The shield whose immensity of the plateaus hides the geological treasures seems endless, to the point that, like from the seaside, its curved monotony ends up illustrating the roundness of the earth.
Until a rim, a deep precipice edge, brutally reveals them (below "Green River Overlook" in Canyon Land park north of Moab).
Huge moving herds of buffalo shook the rock; impossible to stop the enormous movement which only slants at the edge of the rim at the last moment, sacrificing the leaders who, straight ahead, smoking muzzles, falled for lack of having seen the abyss soon enough.
Thus, route 94 runs along the southern edge (the south rim) of the Grand Canyon going east, on the great plateau called Colorado at an altitude of more than 2000 meters, the one in which the river of the same name has accomplished these fantastic erosions in a few million years.
Some balcony parking lots are the first contact with the fabulous abyss.
Primal emotion, and we savor with vast breaths the inconceivable and mythical panoramas.
A certainty, in this impassive silence, no camera, the best it is, will never know how to render its beauty.
Sometimes the road moves away from the edge, leaving space for short forests of kinds of oaks and other species of arid climates, in which the famous local antelopes roam, on the side of the " Coconino forest ".
One time, we stop to capture a photo of a quiet little herd, barely frightened 30 meters back from the road.
And now, when restarting, the automatic gearbox of our Toyota Corolla locks up.
Cannot move the lever from position P ("park") and shift to forward gear or back.
My US " rescuer » hears, and answers me… in French ! What an adventure dear listeners !! If ridicule killed, I would have passed away several times already.
Without understanding the reason for my blockage. So much so that on other occasions, cursed driver, I reproduced the same stupid scheme, debloked by Marlene again.
Hey! I here am well stuck! The nervous becomes irascible. Anger, consternation ; what are we going to do alone on the road, and without even the modern plug-in tool, the mobile phone (yes, a shame)?
So I am going to solicit in my bad english a family stopped further in their vehicle.
But Marlène gets behind the wheel of our car, and suddenly the thumbs up screams at me " that walks ! "; with disarming ease, she who refuses to drive an automatic car.
Until a few days later and 800 miles away, finally my reason comes to me : to move the lever freely, you must press the brake pedal at the same time .
Logically, to prevent the vehicle from inadvertently moving in one direction or the other when you move the lever ...
But it had to get to the left lobe of brain soon eighties, after having crossed many convolutions ...
Continuing further east along the abyss, here is another viewpoint, the "Desert View Watchtower" where a modern US architect, Mary Colter erected in 1932 a round tower that would be made of stone in true Indian style, that of the ancient Pueblo Peoples, but much more monumental in size.
We learn that the Grand Canyon, almost 30 km wide from one edge to the other in its most flared part, narrows at least 5 km, and stretches winding 446 km between Lee's Ferry (to the south de Page) and Grand Wash Cliffs, in other words between Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Her depth reaches 1600 meters over a portion of 16 km ; the "tiny" Colorado River at the bottom is 90 meters wide.
the colorado river
The completely exceptional character of this gigantic geological formation justifies its classification as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Here is what the Organization says:
".... its twists and turns are the result of six million years of geological activity and erosion caused by Colorado waters on the earth's uplifted crust.
With its reputation and exceptional natural beauty, the Grand Canyon is considered one of the most visually powerful landscapes in the world.
It owes its fame to the vertiginous character of its depths, to its hillocks in the shape of temples, spikes and other mesas that give the impression of being mountains and its topography as vast as multicolored and labyrinthic.
The park conceals among its natural wonders high plateaus, plains, deserts, forests, ash cones, lava flows, streams, waterfalls and one of the largest whitewater rivers in America.
The horizontal strata of the canyon retrace 2 billion years of geological history and illustrate the four major geological eras that compose it., from Precambrian to Cenozoic.
The Precambrian and Paleozoic periods are particularly visible on the canyon walls and present a high concentration of fossils.
Numerous caves shelter fossils and faunal remains which extend the paleontological record up to the Pleistocene. "
But don't be mistaken.
The essential is elsewhere : the real attraction, the highlight of the show is actually here in the large parking lot, these two face-to-face Chevrolets, one of which belongs, perhaps, to a girl.
