How To Spend Two To Five Days At El Tovar Suggestions for Two Days. Suppose the visitor to the Canyon arrives in the morning on an early train and must leave the next night; how can he best fill in his time?
In the morning of the first day he should take the popular drives to Yavapai and Hopi Points, and the afternoon can be spent in driving out on the Hermit Rim Road to the head of Hermit Trail, with a stop, returning, to view the sunset from Hopi Point.
The second day can be well spent in going down Bright Angel Trail.
Suggestions for Three Days. If the visitor has three days at his disposal, let him spend the first day on Hermit Rim Road; the second day he can drive to Grand View and enjoy the eastern end of the Canyon. These trips will give him a general outlook over the Canyon from all the salient near by points on the rim, El Tovar, Yavapai and Grand View on the east, and Maricopa, Hopi, Mohave and Pima west on Hermit Rim Road, and an extensive panorama stretching many miles from the end of the road.
The next day the Bright Angel Trail trip may be made, and at the end of the third day on returning from this trip, the traveler will be able to assert with truthfulness that he has gained a reasonably comprehensive view of Grand Canyon.
Suggestions for Four or Five Days. If one can spend four or five days, and wishes to fill every hour with travel and sightseeing, he can take one or all of the day's experiences already suggested.
To the Boucher Trail. Then let him plan either to ride a saddle animal or be driven to the head of the Boucher Trail (about six thousand five hundred feet elevation) through the forest to the west, by Rowe's Well, a distance of ten miles. This trip can be made in about two hours. If one has been driven to this point, the harness is removed from the horses, saddles substituted, and the descent of the trail begun.
Dripping Spring. It is a little over a mile to Dripping Spring, which is at about five thousand four hundred and ninety-three feet elevation. The trail descends easily at first through a beautiful wooded canyoncito, where it is completely hidden and embowered in foliage. Then it winds its way down and around the cherty limestone, to the top of the cross-bedded sandstone, down which zigzags and steps lead one to the spring itself. This is located in a picturesque spot. Picture a great, overhanging wall at the very bottom of the cross-bedded sandstone, from twelve to fifty and more feet high, the recess being perhaps thirty or forty feet back. From the rocks above, with a drop of about fifteen feet, seeping through a green cluster of maidenhair ferns, the pure water of the spring drips into a stone trough placed to receive it. Day and night, winter and summer, fair weather or foul, it seldom varies its quick, tinkling, merry drip, drip into the receptacle below. Below the trough, a natural cavity in the rocks receives the overflow, and here, within the pool and on its edges, aquatic and other plants grow in profusion. By the side of this ever-flowing water, Louis Boucher, the builder of the trail, has his simple home camp. Two tents, placed end to end, rest against the wall, well protected from sun and rain, though the morning's sun shines in freely. Below is a corral for horses, mules and burros used on the trail.
Hermit Basin. Here, after lunch, one continues on his trail trip to the river. For three miles the trail winds in and out of the recesses, on the easily rolling ground of the plateau. There are no sharp descents. For about half a mile the trail is in Dripping Spring Amphitheatre, an alcove on the edge of Hermit Basin, so named by Louis P. Brown, a miner and prospector, who, in the early eighties, made this basin his home while engaged in prospecting operations in the Canyon.
