And The ADVENTURE Continues...: August 31, 2015 Hanging Gardens, Horseshoe Bend, Navajo bridge, Vermillion Cliffs and Lee’s Ferry (Part 1)

Monday, August 31, 2015 Hanging Gardens, Horseshoe Bend, Navajo bridge, Vermillion Cliffs and

Lee’s Ferry

This was the plan for today. We were going to go to Upper Canyon and make our reservations for today and then we were going to check in at the Lower Canyon. Well….last night we had a rainstorm and the canyons experienced a flash flood so we couldn’t go into either one of them. So we had to regroup and decide what we were going to do today. We decided to go and see Vermillion Cliffs.

On the way we saw Hanging Gardens. So it was still on the cool side so we hiked to this small garden. It was a nice 1.41 miles walking over rocks and to just see the landscape. It was very peaceful out there. We left this peace and started out towards the cliffs. Mike saw a sign that said Horseshoe Bend so we turned in to see this site.

Horseshoe Bend was a good 1.2 mile hike. The hike wasn’t bad but the steep hill although short was a rough climb but it was worth it. As we were going down this hill a group of young adults were speaking Italian so I asked where they were from….Milan. We struck up a good conversation that made time go by real fast. This was a great place to see the Colorado River. It is amazing how Mother Nature carves beautiful work and displays each one differently.

Onto the cliffs. The cliffs were a beautiful red and orange hence the name Vermillion. As we got closer we crossed over the Navajo Bridge. They say that this is the beginning of the Grand Canyon. There are 2 bridges here the old one which is now a pedestrian bridge and a new one to handle the heavy vehicular traffic. These bridges were going over the Colorado River.

On our journey home we had another detour. Mike wanted to see Lee’s Ferry. We ventured down another road going down towards the river. As we came up on the river it did look a little different. The river had 2 colors. One was the greenish color and the other was a creamy brown. They were small rapids that were called riffles which brings sediment into the river hence the color brown. We also saw a couple of outfitters getting large rafts ready for multi-day trips down the Colorado River. These trips last from 3 -18 days.