Grand Canyon West Skywalk

 

From Williams, we drove almost 2 hours west to Kingman, AZ where we stayed for two nights so we could visit The Skywalk at Eagle Point.

Kingman was a much bigger city than I imagined.  We came in at night and as we approached we could see a plethora of city lights.  We stayed at a Best Western that, strangely, had their hot tub in a separate, glass building in the parking lot.  Hmmmm....we chose not to partake!

The drive from Kingman to The Skywalk is a long, barren road with absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see.....no houses, stores or bathrooms.  We did, however, drive through Joshua Tree National Forest.   Believe me, it's not a "forest" as we think of it in New England!

When you get to the landing point for the Walkway, you are on a Native American Reservation.  No private vehicles are allowed beyond that point, so they have shuttles to bring you out to Eagle Point.

It's called Eagle Point because of the "eagle" shape of the rock formation as you look out over the canyon.

Our main point for going was to walk on the glass walkway.

We had been told we would not be able to bring any cameras or phones on the walkway.  We had to take everything out of our pockets and put them in a locker.  Then we had to put on booties so our shoes wouldn't scratch the glass.  

It was an extremely windy day, so it was initially pretty exhilarating to go out on the walkway. It wasn't nearly as scary as one would think, as attested to by the fact that Hubby, who is not fond of heights, had no problem being out there.  

After the first minute or so, I found myself feeling under-whelmed.  You were only a few feet over the canyon, the floor of the walkway wasn't all glass (there were steel beams on either side, and only about 3 feet of glass were under your feet) and the view of the canyon was not as beautiful as some of the views we'd seen the day before.  But it was a very cool experience and one I'm glad we had.

There had been adverised that there was a Native American Village to tour.  The village turned out to be a display of different styles of Native American homes.

They did have a Native American man chanting with his drum and a few women "dancing".

From Eagle Point, a shuttle took you over to Guano Point.  At first I was wondering why they would call it Guano Point, knowing that guano is bat excrement.   It turns out that there was a cave there full of bats and they had set up a way to excavate the guano from the cave and use it for fertilizer.

It was still incredibly windy, and there were little dust tornadoes everywhere.  The view of the canyon was murky, but it made it that much more dramatic!

We climbed to the top of the first rock formation.  The people on the walkway below were tiny!

We chose not to climb to the top of the second rock formation....it looked too scary! Yes, those are people at the top of it!

We did decide to walk along the walkway to the end of the point to see the remains of the guano mine.

This was the first time on the trip that I was nervous about the edge.  Not for us, because we were smart enough to stay far away.  I was nervous for the other people who were standing on the edge, climbing over the low rocks that formed a boundary, or sitting on those rocks to take photos. Several times I had to turn my back  - I didn't want to be witness to someone going over the edge!

                             

At the end of the point was the stage for the mine.  From there, there used to be a cable line that workers would have to cross to get to the cave on the other side!  Not a job I would be volunteering for!

Yea...I made sure I was closer to the rock formations than I was to the edge!

(note the Grand Canyon T-shirt....we are such tourists!)

From Guano Point we took the shuttle back to the staging area, then drove back to Kingman for another night.  

In the morning I wanted to have a nice breakfast at a diner instead of the usual hotel breakfast. We found Mr.D'z Diner on Route 66.

It was everything one would want in a roadside diner.  Ketchy, with lots of memorabilia on the walls.  Great food! And a jukebox too!

Bathrooms

Up to that point, I hadn't realized we were on Route 66!  Now we can say "We got our Kicks on Route 66!"

After a very delicious diner breakfast, we started the 3 hour drive back to Phoenix for the grand finale.....the Musical Instrument Museum!