By way of the Vermillion Cliffs and Marble Canyon
In order to get from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the north rim, you have to drive something like 200 miles. If you are the Vagabond Tourist, that is too far to drive in one day, so we stopped at Vermillion Cliffs National Monument on the way. The Vermillion Cliffs are red. I know. Insane! Yet so it is.
The Colorado River also runs through this area, looking anything but mighty enough to carve out the Grand Canyon. Across the road from the imposing vermillion cliffs is a non-vermillion desert area with boring beige soil that looks flat but actually rolls a bit. We pulled off the road there and parked along a dirt road that appears to go nowhere, and in fact DOES go nowhere. I rode my trike down this road, and before I got to Nowhere I ran into the Colorado River running through the Marble Canyon. It surprised me because there is no sign whatsoever that there is a river, or water of any sort, in the area. You cannot see it from the road. I had to look on the map to ascertain that the meandering stream I found at the end of the dirt road was actually the Colorado River.
Here are some of the vermillion cliffs looking characteristically vermillion
Here is the Colorado flowing through Marble Canyon with some more vermillion cliffs in the background. It looks more like a drainage ditch than the Mighty Colorado. Let us contrast this view with the below, which is the only glimpse of the Colorado that I could get from the top of the Grand Canyon…and believe you me, it was hard to find. I shot it with a 200 mm telephoto lens because otherwise it would have been invisible.
Here is the Mighty Colorado flowing through the Grand Canyon.