WHEW! I have finally caught up with my blog. We came to Kingman because it is the closest town to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, where the Skywalk is. The Skywalk was built a few years ago. It is made of glass, including the floor and juts out over the rim.
The West Rim is on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. It is very different than the North and South Rims, which are National Parks. At the North Rim, you go to the visitor center and then drive yourself around to all the lookouts. At the South Rim, if you don't take a tour like we did, you go to the visitor center and have your choice of taking the shuttle or driving yourself to all the lookouts. That is the way at all the National Parks we have ever been to. Not at the West Entrance. Because it is on the reservation, you can't go there if you don't buy a tour. We bought the one that included the Skywalk and a meal. You can't even take any food or drink with you. I put my water bottle in my purse because I wasn't sure where we could buy water. Good thing I did. You couldn't buy water until the 2nd stop. I could never have lasted that long without it.
It is very, very crowded. I bet 99.9% of the people were Asians with a a few Europeans thrown in. We very seldom heard English. There are 3 viewpoints. They herd you, like cattle, onto a huge tour bus to take you to each place. You can stay as long as you want . The lines to get on the buses were very long. They need the buses to come more often.
The main attraction is the Skywalk. You have to put everything in a locker. They don't let you carry any cameras, cell phones or anything onto the Skywalk. They don't want anything dropped. You can certainly understand that. You even have to put paper booties on your feet. They don't want any shoes scratching the glass. It is a little spooky walking onto the glass. You are looking straight down to the Canyon floor. Spooky, but fun and interesting. The Skywalk is in a horseshoe shape with a glass floor and glass walls about 4 feet high. It can withstand the weight of 71 fully loaded Boeing747 planes. It can also survive an 8.0 magnitude earthquake within 50 miles. Also it is immune to winds in excess of 100 miles an hr. Even tho it is, I would hate to be on it during and earthquake or such high winds.
Side view of the Skywalk
I took this picture to show you that there are no guardrails at any of the viewpoints. I've seen people some that go right to the very edge!
This was a trail to an abandon tram. It was built in 1957 to take men to an Guano pit. Guano (bat droppings) is very good for fertilizer. The tram was damaged in 1960 by the jet that flew under it and damaged the cable. It was never rebuilt so it was only in use 3 years. A lot of money to build for only 3 years. Again, you can see that there are no fences anyway where you walk.
An overview
This is a line to catch the bus. We were in line when I took the picture. When we first got there, the line was twice as long as this.
Since you can't take pictures on the Skywalk there are professionals to do it for you. They have you over a barrel if you want a picture of you in the Skywalk, so of course, they are expensive.
Notice the booties that you have to wear
As part of the package that you buy, there are some general pictures of the Skywalk. This was taken last January. BURR. Glad I wasn' there
Another of the general pictures that you can buy
Out of sequence but still quite the view
We were in Kingman, AZ., the closest town to the Skywalk. It was 70 miles. Fourteen miles of the road was " a dirt and gravel road, but very well maintained" They were right on the dirt and gravel part, but NOT on the maintained part. It was so washboard that you could probably wash clothes on it. Very, very rough.
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