AZ - Day 12 At the Canyon (PD)

We arrived about 1145. Entertainment on the train had included a singer who played the accordion. Being British means being reticent. But we joined in the singing.

Our carriage guy Nickolaus was very informative and spoke to everyone at length to help us get the most out of the trip. After all, we were only going to have about three and a half hours there.

As the ladies always take longer in the rest rooms, I went to take some pix of the train. Where's my phone?

I backtracked to the rail car and searched high and low. Nada. Nickolaus was changed out of his uniform and helped look. A really nice guy with a peach of a job!  

More backtracking, into the gloom of the men's room, and there it was under the washbasins. Sadly face down. Scratched but at leas had it back. 

So the tour starts, using the map in the newspaper that was on the train. Nick suggested if we walked from the El Tovar and rail depot to the visitor centre, getting the free shuttle bus back would be better. Apparently eleven stops going east but only three coming back to the depot.

So that was the plan.

Climbing the steps between the El Tovar and the Hopi House and the fifty yards to the first overlook... I can't wait.... the anticipation!

WOW WOW WOW!!!!!!

The first sight is simply breathtaking.

Photographs can never do it justice.

Firstly we walked to the west towards the Kalb Studio, calling in the Lookout Studio along the way. The round trip from the El Tovar is about half a mile. Temperatures much lower than in Phoenix at around 95F.  We had plenty of water and along the Rim Trail there are plenty of water stops.

Next stop was the Hopi House. It's now a shop and art gallery for Indian goods. Claire took a shine to a bracelet and so I bought it. Not as altruistic as it sounds but my credit card has no exchange rate juggles and commission charges!

We decided to do the Rim Trail walk  to the Yavapai Point and then around to Mather Point and finally the visitor centre.  I set Runkeeper a little belatedly and it recorded 2.7 miles, so I expect we did a bit over three miles. With plenty of stops to admire the view and look at the geological timeline. Time flew. In fact the health app on my phone recorded 17500 steps compared with my usual daily 9000. 

All along the rim you count down the millennia from about 2700 million years to present. It is impossible to get your head around these kind of numbers....

We arrived at the visitor centre with less than an hour to spare for the return train and so we got an iced coffee to cool down and then the shuttle bus back to the depot.

A quick look in the El Tovar and then back to get on the train.  There was time for Claire to have her picture taken with the Train Senior Conductor.

On the way back we were in the Pullman Class car, no aircon!  But opening windows. This car has the seats that can all face the direction of travel of forms small groups. A simple mechanism lets passengers move the backs to face either direction.

Seats all facing forward

Some seats forward other backwards

The journey back was another two and a quarter hours.

I took a few pictures out of the open window. I also took some videos that are downloaded to the computer. If you like trains, then you might like them. I'll post the link when I have uploaded them to YouTube.

At one point we had the accordion lady again, but not before the train was stopped by train robbers and they came in to rob us.  Luckily they didn't take anything other than a few people's dignity with their jokes! Then the sheriff came to chase them off.

And then we arrived back in Williams. Journey over.

The evening. Boring people we are we went back to Pine County. It had been a hot and tiring day and we were in bed about 1030pm after packing our cases.