{"id":145,"date":"2016-05-20T04:38:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T12:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/?p=145"},"modified":"2016-07-17T06:41:41","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T14:41:41","slug":"day-4-grand-canyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/?p=145","title":{"rendered":"Day 4 – Grand Canyon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The forecast for today was wind, and lots of it.\u00a0 I had hoped to be out in front of it by leaving so early but the wind was blowing pretty good even before the sun was up, and it was windy all day\u00a0 – gusts to 50 mph was the forecast; I\u2019m not going to argue.<\/a><\/p>\n

A lot of the land in this part of Arizona is reservation land – part of what is, without a doubt, the biggest screw job this country has ever done to ANY race of people, don\u2019t get me started but if you want to read a good book, try – Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee<\/a>.\u00a0 Anyway – this particular area is Navajo Indian country and one of the things you see every once in a while are these little road-side trading posts.\u00a0 These days though, they aren\u2019t trading for beads, they want cold hard green backs (a little early in the morning for these guys – too much fire water maybe??).\u00a0 Okay, okay – I apologize….<\/a><\/p>\n

The early bird gets – the best camp site.\u00a0 Camping at the Desert View Campground in Grand Canyon National Park is first come first served and there are 49 sites.\u00a0 It used to be tent only but now they do take RV\u2019s shorter than 30ft.\u00a0 The best time to be there is mid morning so you can pick a site that is being vacated and stake your claim to that one.\u00a0 From Page that campground is only 100 miles away so I figured my 6:00 AM departure should be good enough, and it was.\u00a0 I was at the campground by 8:15 and the site I wanted was vacant.\u00a0 The tent was up and I was off on my exploration of the canyon and in search of breakfast (brunch by now) by 9:30.<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the reasons I picked Desert View Campground was because this particular place is one of the best places to photograph sunrises and sunsets over the Grand Canyon.\u00a0 I figured as long as I have the whole photo bag with me, I might as well try to get some good pictures.\u00a0 I hiked down to the point and it does look like an ideal place to photograph the canyon – very hazy though with all this wind.\u00a0 \"Ditch-LY\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My stomach is gnawin\u2019 on my backbone though and although I don\u2019t give it much of a chance, I decided to check out the \u201ctrading post\u201d here at the viewing area.\u00a0 Brunch this morning – the Navajo Taco.\u00a0 Indian fry bread, ground beef, beans, onions, cheese, lettuce, salsa, and guacamole (no guak please).\u00a0 My belly full, I rode around the canyon for a while.<\/a><\/p>\n

I had just pulled into the visitors center when this guy pulls in behind me.\u00a0 Oh, he\u2019s got a dog with him, cute.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen guys that take their dog on the bike with them so although rare, it\u2019s not unique.\u00a0 What, he has THREE dogs – Okay, that\u2019s unique; the Rebel Dawg Adventure Team<\/a>.\u00a0 I went for a walk around the center while he was walking his dogs (they are all shit-zoos (please forgive my phonetical spelling) and we ended up back at the bikes around the same time.\u00a0 I talked to him for 5 or 10 minutes and we swapped web site information.\u00a0 They’re on their way up the west coast – follow him via that link above.\"Dogs5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back at the camp to start setting up for my sunset over the canyon shot.\u00a0 I\u2019m not too optimistic though, because along with the haze now there\u2019s a decent amount of cloud cover.\u00a0 None the less, I gather my gear and head over.\u00a0 It\u2019s about 90 minutes till sunset but I want to get a good spot and my dogs can use a rest.\u00a0 Hiking around in cowboy boots all day is something I never even thought about when I was 30 – twenty-five plus years later, those boots ain\u2019t made for walkin\u2019.\u00a0 I got my place and met and spoke with several people while I was there.\u00a0 Alas – the socialization was the best part.\u00a0 This was the best I could come up with for a sunset over the canyon on this particular evening.\"Canyon<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DayIt\u2019s still very windy and starting to get rather cold.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to hunt my hole and see about gettin’ some much needed shut eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The forecast for today was wind, and lots of it.\u00a0 I had hoped to be out in front of it by leaving so early but the wind was blowing pretty good even before the sun was up, and it was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7qntY-2l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}