Macabre Blog – Talking about Wickedly Decadent items

We felt the need to get out of the house and decided on Dolan Springs, AZ

Let’s just say that the terrain is beautiful, the tiny town is …. interesting.

We realized that the west rim of the Grand Canyon is just up the road and drove to the entrance but decided to wait for another day to allow for sufficient time to really visit.

We hope to get there sometime in the not too distant future. Media Minion really wants to go out on the glass walkway over the canyon although the price is a bit daunting. We may just settle for looking over the edge and going oooo.

And to top it off, our little Nissan Cube crossed the 120k mark (we got it at 101k so it’s doing well)

We just can’t get enough of the Grand Canyon. The Macabre staff returned to the south rim of the canyon this past week for a few days of camping and sightseeing.
It was just as beautiful as we remembered from our last trip and we had a few new surprises.
Media Minion discovered a short trail down to a rock outcrop below the rim to take some wonderful shots. Somehow he managed to not take a long dive to the bottom of the canyon – the trail was rather craggy, steep and covered in loose gravel so it was a bit treacherous.
Our Dark Mistress actually did battle with her fear of heights and approached a rim overlook. She got within 10 feet of the rim which is amazing for someone with a phobia of heights.

Our Hellhound Kali got up an close and personal view of a bull elk who walked right through our camp, luckily she was so perplexed by what this huge creature was that she stayed still and silent. The video at the end of the pictures captures him wandering through.
In fact, we had an entire family of elk wandering around us every day. We saw a bull and 3 full-grown females along with 2 very young ones. It was amazing watching them wander by, often as close as 10-20 feet from where we stood. At one point another younger male came wandering over and after a lot of trumpeting the older, larger bull chased him around the campground and off into the distance. It was like being in a Disney nature video.
We even caught one of the babies getting a quick lunch from mom.

At some point we want to visit the North Rim, but with winter coming it’s about to close for the season so probably next year.

Oh, the reason there’s a picture of food and some people included is that we were having lunch of some sushi and suddenly realized that a busload of Japanese tourists were offloading behind us. It made us giggle because, well, we’re four years old mentally sometimes.

Here are a few pictures we shot and a video of the bull elk. Enjoy.
As always, you can click on the image for a larger version. The panorama shot was left full size and is well worth popping open.

Bull Elk wandering through our campsite

The Macabre staff went to visit the Grand Canyon. We tried to do this years ago with a couple friends and mistakenly went to the North Rim which it turns out is closed in Winter – to this day we will swear that there was a giant tarp over the canyon to close it and just refuse to believe it really existed (ok just silly hyperbole but you get the point)

We traveled to the South Rim (open year round)  figuring that the crowds would be a lot smaller in the cooler weather. Being from the northeast our intrepid staff had no issues with the temperatures. A daytime temp of 46 was still warmer than December back in the mid-Atlantic.

We camped in Mather Campground the first night, burned some wood, had some cocktails in the woods and then set out the next day along the Desert View drive to see all the overlooks of the canyon culminating with the Desert View tower.

I wish that the camera could really show the scale and depth of the canyon. There are points where, from the rim to the river at the bottom, the elevation changes by as much as 5,000 feet.

The colors are spectacular and we saw a lot of cool wildlife – at one point a herd of deer wandered along the road stalling traffic. We saw the biggest crows we’ve ever seen in our lives. These things were almost the size of our dog and utterly fearless. They would come into our camp looking for scraps and not flee even when a human with a dog approached them. We kept seeing signs for mountain lions but none ever showed their faces.

The Desert View tower is a spectacular structure which is modern but made to look like ancient native construction. It has 5 floors with views of the canyon but you better be in shape to climb all the steps – which by the way are very narrow and gave Media Minion a real challenge with his size 12 feet. It’s full of traditional art, actual artifacts and there were even a couple Hopi craftsmen in the lobby level demonstrating their craft.

If you ever get the chance to visit the canyon – do so;  you’ll love it.
We hope to do a trip to the West Rim at some point and Media Minion would love to go down into the canyon someday.

As always, click on an image for a larger version.

Media Minion takes HORRIBLE selfies.