There is an IMAX movie on the way into he park but by the time we arrived it was already 2 pm so we didnt want to miss stuff in the park before dark. Therefore we skipped it. At this time of the year the rim trail road is closed to private vehicles and they require people to take a shuttle, but since I did my homework I discovered they offered an accessibility pass which allowed us to dive the road since we have a disabled pass. That was a life saver. We stopped at each overlook, sometimes I walked further in, but mostly this made it so Adam could see most of the work without overly stressing himself. If I was doing this again I would elect to stay at one of the lodges or cabins inside the park. It's like a little village. I thought it was nicer than Yellowstone's lodges because there is more to do around them. I would also rent or bring a bike to ride the rim trail. It's only 13 miles and mostly paved but absolutely gorgeous.
I also learned prior to arriving at the park that they had a week of star parties and star gazing activities and we were there for the last night. I expected that the park would provide a few telescopes for people to look at the stars since it was a dark nights sky. However, I never expected what we actually found. Since we had some time between just before sunset and dark skies we elected to have dinner first, rest up and then saunter over to the telescopes after refueling. I was amazed how tired I was from just driving and not hiking! When we got back to the visitors center we followed a path of red rope lights which were kind of like bread crumbs. The red light is not supposed to affect your vision when viewing the sky like white lights but it does not light up your path very well either. I felt like I was walking blind. We came to a loud sounding group of people who had chairs and telescopes set up all over the place. There must have been 20 different telescopes some requiring you to climb a ladder just to use the eye piece. Not being able to see I thought this was being run by rangers or official park employees but it was actually a bunch of astronomer groups (amateurs) from Prescott and Flagstaff who came up to share their knowledge. It was absolutely fascinating. These people were unbelievably passionate about this hobby and would keep moving the telescopes to show different things. How they knew where to point the scope let alone maneuver the eye pieces and other necessary parts in the dark I have yet to figure out. These were some of the largest scopes I have seen for home use. The nights highlights were being able to see a galaxy far far away with a supernova in it, multiple other galaxies on different axis, and a red carbon star. None of these things are visible with the naked eye. The other fun highlight was when a satellite caught the suns rays and lit up like a lightbulb in the sky. Two seconds later a second one did the same thing because one was space junk and the other was its replacement so they flowed the same trajectory. I guess it could have been mistaken for a shooting star but it moved too slowly. We also saw saturn, its rings and three moons. It looked just like we all know it should except it was white and not red in the sky. The focal points moved out of the viewfinder within 45 seconds or so which showed us how fast the earth is actually turning. I'm afraid Adam wants a telescope even more now than he did before.
So those were our Grand Canyon highlights. We had hoped to move on to Page, AZ today but got stopped in Flagstaff since one of the oxygen concentrators died. Apria did a good job giving us some sort of replacement on a Sunday but we will have to rectify the situation better when we get back to Denver.
For now, we are exhausted but I managed to get myself to historic downtown Flagstaff to see the shops and train station right on good old Route 66. Next stop we plan to take in the views from the Grand Canyons North rim. We are going that way anyway, so we might as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment