We had two more activities on the agenda, grab a quick bite to eat in the Village (a short blue bus ride) and a bus ride to Hermit’s Rest viewpoint. The bite ended up being pulled pork sandwiches with a beverage on the side at a cafeteria followed by a gift shop stopover. Gen and I got Grand Canyon t-shirts.
We then had a short walk to the red bus to travel along the road to Hermit’s rest and stop at a variety of viewpoints. We stopped at Powell Point and walked to Hopi Point and rode to Hermits Rest. The canyon was beautiful, of course, but had a mist across it which prevented a perfect view of distant objects. The mist may have been from blowing sand or distant wildfire smoke; no one could tell us for sure.
While we were walking past the Hermits Rest washrooms, we noticed a group of Asian women tying sticks together with pieces of cloth and were intrigued. One in their group had dropped their cell phone into the vault toilet and they were trying to retrieve it. We offered our remaining walking sticks to aid the ultimately unsuccessful effort. They were going to come back the next day with a ranger to unlock the vault and try to pull the phone out.
At this point, we were done. We took the red bus to the blue bus and the blue bus to the visitor center, with a good view of a bunch of Elk hanging around the Village, to try to boost our dead vehicle. When we got to the car, we found someone to help us with a boost. We tried their booster pack to no success then we got a boost from their RV with no success. Eventually, we had to let them go. They tried to give us their battery booster pack because they didn’t want to leave us high and dry; we ended up paying them for it. Learning from our experience a few days ago where we had a second vehicle boost us and we started up in no time, we found a second person to help us out. The sound of the Santa Fe roaring to life was fantastic. With many thanks to the helpful couple, we set out for our dispersed campsite.
Originally our goal was to try to make the North Rim that night, with the delay getting to and starting the car, that wasn’t going to happen. We drove out of the park and north with a brief stop at Burger King for some $3 Big Kings which were delicious. Gen found a dispersed camping site near the Vermillion cliffs, a two hour drive. We didn’t know much about the Cliffs except that they were a National Monument. We arrived, opened a random gate at the side of the road and settled into a campsite a couple hundred metres off the road. The kids needed to be carried to bed.
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