After a leisurely morning we headed into GCNP around 10:30, and we were surprised. Traffic was backed up for about a half mile at the five entry gates. It took us about a half hour inch-by-inch to enter the park. We avoided the Village area which is the real concentration of people and drove along the Desert View Drive to the Desert View Visitor's Center near the east entrance to the park (not the main visitor's center that we couldn't get into yesterday).

There were plenty of available parking spots so we walked around some and climbed to the top of the Watchtower, a 1930s construction designed by the famous architect Mary Colter mimicking a Native American ruin.

Views were beautiful and it has been a clear cool day - excellent for walking around so we stopped at a few lookout points on our way back.

Some overlooks were so crowded that there were no parking spots - just a line of cars waiting for someone to leave, so we avoided those. We stopped at the Tusayan Ruin and Museum and there were very few people there. I guess most folks go to the Grand Canyon to see the canyon and rocks, not the prehistory of human use of the canyon environments.

The Tusayan Ruin is one of over 4000 sites known in the Park. It was built around A.D. 1185 and probably housed about 20 to 30 people. They gathered wild foods and grew crops, which is rather amazing because it is about 7300' in elevation. This was during a period of global warming named by scientists the Medieval Warm Period. The small community was short lived because by 1250 the world was entering the Little Ice Age and the frost-free growing season became too short for crops at that altitude.

Continuing on our way we stopped at a picnic area for lunch and all the tables were being used so we found a nice log.

It was a beautiful day but we are "peopled out" so we left the park and don't plan to return tomorrow. We stopped by the Kaibab National Forest office and picked up some info and maps about hikes in the forest, so that is what we will do tomorrow. Because of the congestion we have encountered in the Park we plan to get up early on Thursday and hopefully beat the hordes through the Park on our way to Bryce Canyon, Utah.