Desert View, Looking out over the Canyon

One habit we seem to have is to wait and see the sights closest to us last.  Desert View is at the extreme eastern end of the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park.  At Desert view are bathrooms, a gift shop, a store/snack bar, the caretaker house, and, of course, the Desert View Watchtower.  Today Marcia was wanting to just take it easy around the motorhome.  After I cleaned the air vent fan in the main living area, and a few other chores, I decided to go over to see Desert View which is within walking distance…but a bit easier to drive.  After all, I intended to climb the four floors to the top of the tower because, after all, “it is there”.

The Watchtower area is a fairly popular place, but not as popular and busy as the Mather Point, Bright Angel Point and the area in between these two.  But many people take the 20 mile drive to the east to see Desert View…and the large parking lot gets full, but we did not see it fill all the way up.  Still, lots of people…the only down fall for the place.

On the outside of the watchtower, you can walk around and get views of the canyon.  They also honor those lost in the worst aviation crash of its day, back in 1956, when a United Airlines DC-7 collided with a TWA Super Constellation as they were both maneuvering around towering cumulus clouds at 21,000 feet.  All 128 passengers and crew perished.  The wrecks were located just in the upper left of my picture above, just on the other side of the river—the picture taken just to the northeast of the watchtower.  Due to this wreck, the FAA was born.  It is nice of them to remember this crash so many years later when just three years ago they unveiled this plaque designating the site as a historic landmark.  The initial picture of this posting was taken just to the east of the watchtower along this outer area, looking back to the main entrance of the Grand Canyon to the west.

The watchtower is four floors high, 70-feet, and a narrow stairway goes up the four floors.  There is this wooden ladder which goes up one floor, but is no longer in use.  Look at the wood in the ceiling.  (I took a panoramic shot of each floor, so this is a circular room, as are the others in the pictures below.)

This is the second floor.  Note the sign leaning up against the circular center, which is the same sign to the right of this writing.  The sign was hand painted by Mary Jane Colter, who designed the Watchtower and about six other buildings in the Grand Canyon.  Back in 2008, two men decided that they did not like the grammar/punctuation on the sign and with whiteout and sharpie pens they changed a few things on the sign.  They got caught and were fined and ordered by the judge to not visit any National Park for a year.   That, of course, made national headlines, and the sign was restored.

    

Above is the third floor, with a view above to the fourth, and below to the second.  The stairway is to the right in the top picture, with the young man coming up from the second floor in the extreme right of the picture, and then the stairs go up right above that.

    

And here is the fourth floor, with a look at the ceiling above, and down to the third and second floors below.  But if you look at the top picture of these three, you can see a stairway with people going up.  Now I showed the entry level, and the second, third and now fourth floors.  It is said to be “a four story tower”, yet I have to climb another set of stairs to get to the top “lookout” floor.  I think they just like to fool old men like me into thinking you are only going up four sets of stairs, which makes it a four story structure…when in reality it is five stories tall when you count the bottom story.  After all, who does not count the bottom floor???

Of course, the top floor is where everyone was headed.  On each floor I stopped and sat and enjoyed the view (ok, so I was resting).  Most people went up, looked, went back down.  A few were in front of my as I headed up to the second floor, and by the time I got to the third floor, they were coming down!  (Ok, so I rested for a long time…)  But wait, what is this in the middle????  Are those more stairs????

Yes, it must be the stairway to Heaven, because it is leading upward…but had I climbed it, I would have been cursing it as if it was the stairway to hell….  (Ok mom, I will wash my mouth out with soap, again…)  This stairway evidentially leads to the roof of the tower….I agree that the roof is not another floor.  I am just thankful I did not need to climb those wooden stairs too.  

Now that’s a long ways down there…that circular area is a part of the second floor, and I think that is where the initial wooden ladder would have gone had they not changed this area (see picture of first floor).  Below this circular area is the area around the outside of the tower where my first shots where taken.

Walking down those narrow stairs seems harder than walking up.  I was thankful for the white stripe at the edge of each stair, at least I could see that through my trifocals.  Except the last flight of stairs where, for some reason, they did not have the white stripe…YIKES!

When I got to the second floor, I stepped out onto that circular area I showed earlier looking down when I was at the top.  Low and behold as I looked out to the left, I see this sign with a verse from Psalms on it:  “All the earth worships thee; they sing praises to thee, sing praises to thy name. Psalms 66:4 (Revised Standard Version of the Bible)

As I exit the watchtower, I am thankful for the park bench which I can sit on and contemplate on all that I saw, and watch the various nationalities of people walk by…German, French, Spanish, Pakistani, Chinese, and others with about 40% speaking English, walking by.  Has nothing to do with my sore legs, of course (cough cough)  I also enjoyed the picnic table outside the old snack bar, and after I got my diet pepsi, I enjoyed the last park bench before you get to the parking lot.  Just lots of people from all over the world walking by…what a country!!!