The Most Pleasant 44 Miles in America

The Most Pleasant 44 Miles in America Summer travel in cool country

Forty-four miles. That's the entire length of Arizona State Highway 67. On the north end, it branches from U.S. 89A at Jacob Lake. On the south, it terminates at the doorstep of Grand Canyon Lodge, on the North Rim. Without a doubt, it is one of the most pleasant 44 miles in America, maybe the world.

What makes Highway 67 so worthwhile is not the road itself, but the sphere through which it flows. The Paiute Indians call it the "Mountain Lying Down." President Teddy Roosevelt set it aside June 26, 1906, as the Grand Canyon National Game Range. Today we know it as the northern part of the Kaibab National Forest, more often shortened to "Kaibab North" or "Kaibab Plateau." The Mountain Lying Down is actually a giant dome with Grand Canyon cut into the southern slope. The Canyon acts as a Mason-Dixon Line, physically dividing the Kaibab's north from the south, creating different biotic communities. Certain plants and animals found in one are absent in the other.

Arizona Highway 67 crunches over the highest part of the dome with its lowest elevation being 7921 feet at Jacob Lake and rising to 9000 feet near the National Park boundary then descending to 8153 feet at Bright Angel Point, on the North Rim of the Canyon. On the average, Route 67 stays snowbound, solidly closed, for eight months of the year, save for occasional caravans of arctic-equipped snowmobilers who make the winter haul to the North Rim.

Driving south from Jacob Lake, you first find hallways of 100-foot-high redbarked ponderosa pine interwoven with stands of ivory-trunked quaking aspen. Golden curtains of sunlight hang there in early morning and evening. The Kaibab squirrel, with tufted ears and parasol tail, lives there and only one other place on the planet, the Trumbull Mountains, about 50 miles to the west.

Seven miles out, tiny Murray's Lake reclines in a lively bouquet of flowers. At approximately the 20-mile point, the road breaks out of the forest, and you drive into a chain of meadows, called "parks," which run for over 15 miles into Grand Canyon National Park. Aspens and a conifer congregation of Douglas fir and Englemann and blue spruces-pointed, symmetrical "Christmas" trees-fence in the parks and emerald ponds like Crane Lake, Deer Lake, and Indian Lake. Wild flowers salt and pepper the area; late spring, summer, early fall, there always seems to be wild flowers. Rustic, log-built Kaibab Lodge sits, welcoming, on the North Rim, with usually a band of mule deer grazing not far away. When you cross the National Park boundary, the meadows grow smaller and less frequent, and the forest closes in again. In the Park, abundant wildlife exists, including record class mule deer bucks and Merriam's turkeys and blue grouse. And you are more than likely to see some exciting examples. Protected there, individuals within certain species, mostly deer, have grown accustomed to man and are little bothered by his presence.

One aficionado, who spends most of his free time exploring this pleasant land, has a nice way of describing it: "God spent five days creating all the marvels of the world and formed this section on the sixth day for a haven in which He could rest on the seventh."

(Right) VT Lake in the Kaibab National Forest. Arizona Highway 67, the road to the Grand Canyon's North Rim, flows through some of the world's most beautiful alpine scenery. Vast, dense forests of pine, fir, and aspen cover the Kaibab Plateau, opening on lush meadows awash with wild flowers and dotted with jewellike lakes. James Tallon photo