Grand Falls

When we were in Flagstaff over a month ago visiting Amy, she took us to see Grand Falls, a truly hidden gem. There are no signs to Grand Falls. It's on the reservation and I would think that they didn't want anyone to see it if it weren't for the few scattered picnic tables nearby. 

Amy showed me pictures of Grand Falls a few years ago: powerful, wide, muddy water falls that looked somewhat "grand" yet in my mind I only pictured them being dozens of feet high. 

Imagine my surprise to see how truly Grand they are. I write this, knowing that you won't understand from these pictures the scale. Because I didn't.

Grand Falls are only "grand" and "falling" twice a year during spring runoff or monsoon season. The rest of the year they are a dry wash. They were running a few weeks before we got there, but by the time we made the trip the water had trickled down so it was pooled in muddy puddles with only a small stream actually making it down and over the ledge.

We approached the Falls from the top, which meant some resourceful searching for solid ground in a semi-dry riverbed while avoiding the sticky squelching mud that was everywhere.

Sometimes we weren't successful. Like when the mud ate Beau's shoe and I had to rescue it for him.

As I said, I didn't understand that the falls were NOT just a few dozen feet high. They were actually a couple of hundred feet high. So I didn't understand Amy's concern that the boys (Luke, Joshua and Jacob), had gone ahead to the top of the falls - they were basically hiking to the edge of a cliff. I finally grasped this when I looked ahead and saw the boys scaling a wall to the left of the river bed. From my vantage point, it looked like they were climbing a wall that hung precariously over a vast drop off. I snatched up Marianne and carefully - because the riverbed looked like this:

ran ahead to make sure the boys weren't going to fall and die.

It turned out that the wall they were on was not over the edge of the falls, and I was grateful for their safety as well as my own heightened awareness of how high up we really were. 

Here is my view from the top of the falls:

And if you were to stand across the canyon and look at the falls, this is what you would see: See the picnic table on the top of the black ledge on the right of the picture? We were on the ledge in the center of the picture.

The kids enjoyed playing around the various pools of water.

I was worried about Marianne until she decided to sit and make a mud cake with Amy. They sat there for the duration of our visit and I was free to keep an eye on the other kids and take pictures.

Beau joined in her efforts, too, bringing her mud for her cake.

Beau found a cool "bridge" that went across two pools.

Beau and Luke enjoyed finding long sticks and using them to measure the depths of the pools. Some were only a few feet deep and some were seemingly bottomless. I irrationally worried about them falling into the deep ones, as though the depth had anything to do with their ability to swim to the top. Luckily we never had to test the theory and everyone remained relatively dry.

Except Bekah. 

Bekah always immerses herself fully in any experience. If she is painting, she'll have paint from head to toe. If she is baking, she and the kitchen will be dusted with flour. If she is watering plants, she'll be wet, and if there is mud on the ground it will also be all over her. I don't think she can help herself.

See?

"Joshua! Jump over this pool so I can get a picture!"

When we were done playing we hiked back up the riverbed to the van and then we drove around to the opposite side of the canyon. Amy stayed with some of the kids while Joshua, Luke, Beau and I hiked to the bottom of the canyon, the base of the falls. Can you see us?

When we got back to the top we loaded up and headed home. They side of the dirt road we were on had these whoop-de-whoops that the ManVan just had to conquer. The kids loved them. Amy opted to get out of the van to take pictures of us. She might have said that I was the worst driver ever and if I were Mike she would have punched me. But all of the kids objected and said I wasn't bad at all.

I thought these little hills were great fun! Forwards, reverse, fast and slow, we did it all!

Thank you for a Grand adventure, Amy!