Old Colts

GRAND CIRCLE TOUR DAY 13 RAINBOW BRIDGE

I remember a particularly grueling horseback trip through the Superstition Mountains of central Arizona about thirty years ago. As the horses picked their way through the final miles of slippery broken shale, the wrangler-guide said there was only one trail ride in the United States rougher than this.

"Where?" I asked.

"Down the back side of Navajo Moun-tain to Rainbow Bridge," he replied. "Wanna take it?"

No, I didn't I just wanted to know where it was so I'd never take it.

Rainbow Bridge was landlocked in those days and probably no more than 200 people had visited it since John Wetherill discovered it in 1909.

This day I see Rainbow Bridge the easy way.

There's a theory among some purists that the enjoyment gained from viewing Nature's wonders is in direct proportion to the suffering experienced getting there. Nonsense. Today, Rainbow Bridge lies at the end of a blue-water trail linked by a double-decker tour boat from Wahweap Marina, outside the city of Page, Arizona.

No saddlesores. No heat exhaustion. No thirst. Not even sand in my shoes.

Named for Major John Wesley Powell, the first man to explore the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, on the Arizona/Utah border, is a wonderland of Navajo sandstone canyons filled with sapphire and emerald waters. The 185-mile-long lake draws over two million visitors each year to houseboat, water-ski, fish, and sightsee. (OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) Evening shadows highlight the multibued sandstone formations of Lake Powell. Kaz Hagiwara photo LaGorce Arch in Davis Gulch. Peter Kresan photo Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the World's largest stone arch, was discovered by John Wetherill on August 14, 1909. David Muench photo Waterskiing in Escalante Canyon. Peter Kresan photo (ABOVE, RIGHT) Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River holds back the waters of Lake Powell. Completed in 1963, the 583-foot-high concrete dam cost $260 million to construct. At a rate of 1,100,000 kilowatts a day, it has produced more than $350 million in electricity since its start-up day. David Muench photo But I still experience a rush of delight and discovery. I still revel in the aching beauty of that delicate looking stone bridge arching so majestically into the cobalt blue of a cloudless sky.

DAY 14 LAKE POWELL

Like a fabulous jewel encircled by incredibly beautiful gems, Lake Powell is the centerpiece of an enchanted ring of spectacles we've traversed: national parks and monuments, craggy mountains, carnival-colored canyons, steep cliffs, nostalgic hundred-year-old towns, exotic thousand-year-old Indian ruins. Lake Powell is the combined result of 250 million years of canyon cutting and twenty-three years of water collecting behind Glen Canyon Dam, which backs up in the deep canyons. The lake's 1900mile shoreline is longer than the West Coast of the United States.

For more than two million people every year, the lake and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area are the ultimate destination. They come to fish, houseboat, water ski, swim, raft the white waters downstream from the dam, or float the placid lake waters upstream.

This summer, a ferryboat large enough to carry eight cars or two tour buses began shuttling between Hall's Crossing and the resort facilities at Bullfrog in the upper lake, another boon to road-weary water-lovers.

I yearn to get on a boat again, go up one of the ninety-six major canyons, or into a grotto, inlet, sandy beach cove, lagoon. I yearn to cruise past the tops of redrock standing up in Padre Bay. Or catch a bass from a boat in an alcove or swim beneath a stand of great green cottonwood trees. But instead, I buy a Lake Powell T-shirt in the gift shop at the lodge. A final reminder of my grand circle adventure.

Selected Reading

Land of Living Rock, by Charles Gregory Crampton. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1972.

Grand Canyon of the Living Colorado, edited by Roderick Nash. Ballantine Books for the Sierra Club, New York, 1970.

Desert Solitaire: a Season in the Wilderness, by Edward Abbey. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1968.

The Cliffdwellers of Mesa Verde, by Adolf Nordenskiold, Rio Grande Press, Glorieta, 1979.

Native Arizonan and former newspaper columnist Maggie Wilson now divides her time between public relations work and free-lance writing.