Dinner With a View

Last evening we decided to have dinner out... Fletcher hatched a plan for a picnic dinner at a location called Cape Final. He had had this in mind for a while, but he talked to a ranger about it during the day and the ranger thought that sunset dinner at Cape Final would be the best view in the park. So, with a review like that, we cooked our dinner early and loaded up for our dinner out!

To get to the Cape Final trailhead, we drove about 45 minutes to the other side of the park. The road winds through forests, many of which showed the aftereffects of the Outlet Fire that occurred in the year 2000. Tall trees, partly black and partly bleached light gray stand leafless and lifeless while a few ponderosa pines that survived flourish in the unfettered sunlight. Countless young aspens have already grown to 6 feet or more in height with little visible signs of any new pines yet.

We find the trailhead with its small dirt parking area and park. We notice three other vehicles there and we hope that they have not already taken our prime look out spot for sunset. The trail rises a little from the parking area and we are into a somewhat sparse forest. Before long the trail levels out and we continue through the forest for about a mile and a half where we reach a very nice view point...

The shadows are starting to appear in the canyon...we are on the high side of the Grand Canyon on the North Rim...nearly 1,000 feet higher than the South Rim.

We reach Cape final at about 2.2 miles in, and it was definitely worth the hike. Cape Final juts out into the canyon, and stands thousands of feet above the nearest terrain below, and thousands more above the bottom of the canyon. This is also one of the few vantage points from which a person can see the Colorado River at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon. Breathtaking...

Then it was time for dinner, and we had explicitly asked for a table with a view...

As we ate our dinner and chatted among the four of us, we watched the sun set. As the shadows moved across the bottom of the canyon and up the walls of the South Rim, we couldn't help but take picture after picture...the light kept changing and bringing out different hues in the cliffs, or highlighting rock formations that rose above the shadows below.

At one point, perhaps after we finished the wine, Fletcher threatened to drop into a slot in the rocks on the face of the cliff. We were ready to capture the impending tragedy on film, but Sue was less intrigued at the prospect of losing Fletcher...

At the very edge of Cape Final, right next to where we set our table for dinner, the original geological marker from a 1903 survey tells us that the elevation is 7,918 feet. A mere 20 feet away, the 1934 updated survey marker merely refers to the 1903 marker, pointing to "NO. 1" ...apparently the 1934 surveyor was afraid to get too close to the edge. And actually, there is a newer geological marker that is about 8 feet closer to the actual edge of the canyon, mounted on a small pad of stone at the top of a column that has split from the main rock...we're gonna just let the date on that one remain a mystery, none of us were willing to hop out there and look!

We stayed at Cape Final until the sun had completely set and the canyon was filled with shadow, and then packed up for the hike out. The sky gradually darkened as we made our way back to the trailhead, and by the time we reached the car it was pitch black in among the trees. We drove back to our campsite and we were back by about 9:00pm. As we got ready to turn in, we couldn't help but stand outside our RV one more time to take in the vast black sky with countless stars...and occasionally a satellite!

Miles hiked: 4.4. Travel time: 4.5 hours including drive time. Bugs killed: one spider who got into the RV