irections. If you have more days yet at your disposal, there are good
trips on wild trails to Dripping Springs and to Gertrude Point and to
Cataract Canyon and by aerial tram across the Colorado River to the
Kaibab Plateau on the other side. In fact, if you stayed at the Grand
Canyon a year and were not afraid of trailless trips, you could find a
new view, a new wonder place, new stamping grounds each day. Remember
that the Canyon itself is 217 miles long; and it has lateral canyons
uncounted.

When you reach El Tovar you are told two of the first things to do are
take the drives--three miles each way--to Sunrise and to Sunset Points.
Don't! Save your dollars, and walk them both. By carriage, the way leads
through the pine woods back from the rim for three miles to each point.
By walking, you can keep on an excellent trail close to the rim and do
each in twenty minutes; for the foot trails are barely a mile long. Also
by walking, you can escape the loud-mouthed, bull-voiced tourist who
bawls out his own shallow knowledge of erosion to the whole carriageful
just at the moment you want to float away in fancy amid opal lights and
upper heights where the Olympic and Hindoo and Norse gods took refuge
when unbelief drove them from their old resorts. In fact, if you keep
looking long enough through that lilac fire above seas of primrose
mists, you can almost fancy those hoary old gods of Beauty and Power
floating round angles of the massive lower mountains, shifting the
scenes and beckoning one another from the wings of this huge
amphitheater. The space-filling talker is still bawling out about "the
mighty powers of erosion"; and a thin-faced curate is putting away a
figure of speech about "Almighty Power" for his next sermon. Personally,
I prefer the old pagan way of expressing these things in the short cut
of a personifying god who did a smashing big business with the hammer of
Thor, or the sea horses of Neptune or the forked lightnings of old
loud-thundering Jove.

You can walk down Bright Angel Trail to the river at the bottom of the
Canyon; but unless your legs have a pair of very good benders under the
knees, you'll not be able to walk up that trail the same day, for the
way down is steep as a stair and the distance is seven miles. In that
case, better spend the night at the camp known as the Indian Gardens
halfway down in a beautifully watered dell; or else have the regular
daily party bring down the mules for you to t