Riding south on US 89 we rode up over a pass and down a steep escarpment into the broad Colorado River Valley. We turned north on Alt 89 for about ten miles until we reached the Navajo Bridge, yet another spectacular steel arch bridge, anchored into the sides of a deep canyon. Actually there are two bridges. The older bridge, built in the late 1920,s is now a pedestrian only bridge, with the newer bridge just metres away. 
A condor sitting on the rocks below the new bridge was creating a lot of interest among the people walking the old bridge.
Turning south on the other side of the river, we passed the cliffs of Marble Canyon to our right.
Our path led through a broad flat valley until eventually climbing up the other side on a road that would delight any motocyclist with a detectable pulse.
Once on top of the plateaui we rode through low forest until reaching Jacob Lake. This "town" is not known to our GPS, but to be fair, consists only of a service station, lodge (with restaurant and shops) and a variety of accommodation from rustic cabins to two storey brick lodgings.
It is sited at the top of a dead end road that leads 45 miles south to the north Rim of the Grand Canyon at Bright Angel Point. Outside the lodge was a group of about 20 bikers from Germany and Belgium, mostly riding Harleys. Our BMW attracted quite a lot of attention, and we ended up chatting with various memebers of the group for about 15 minutes until their leader put out the call to mount up.
We stopped at the restaurant for lunch, and were told that Fredonia, our planned destination for tonight, had little in the way of facilities. We decided to stay in Jacob Lake and booked into a cabin before setting off to Bright Age Point. The ride there was uneventful, passing through a burnt out section of forest, across alpine meadows with the aspens still in their best autumn dress.
Bright Angel point is 8235 ft above sea level and offers amazing views. To the east is the steep and deep Roaring Srings Canyon. Southwest is Bright Angel Canyon leading to the Colorado River and the South Rim Visitors Centre, 11 miles away. Nothing, not even the canyons and gorges we have seen before, prepared us for this. The scale is simply immense, and what is even more amazing, it is estimated the canyon has only taken 5 to 6 million years to form. That sounds like a long time, but consider that the rock at the bottom ot the canyon is 2,000 million years old...
Marble Canyon(above) would fit into the top coloured layers of the picture below.
We spent an hour at Bright Angel Point, where the best views are from a viewing point at the end of a narrow walkway along a rocky and precipitous spine.
Riding back to Jacob Lake we had a real scare: a huge male deer made a crazy dash across the road in front of us. Chris saw something in the corner of his eye and instinctively grabbed the brakes (thank goodness for antilock brakes!). We missed it by perhaps 10 yards, but it seemed much closer - Chris reckons he could see the whites of the deer's eyes, if not the yolks. As we rode on it dawned on us just how lucky we had been. Hitting a big deer at 50 mph would have really spoilt our day - if it didn't kill us. We caught it on video thanks to Chris's helmet camera, but it is not all that easy to see the deer because everything was in shadow, and the wide angle lens makes it look like it was much further away than it really was. If you want to see it, click here. The deer is about 25 seconds into the video. You need to look closely to see it.
Arriving back at Jacob Lake we picked up the keys to our cabin. It was a very small room and had no facilities other than the bathroom: no fridge, no microwave, no coffee maker, no internet access, not even a TV!, but then it only cost $92.6. It must be a tourist attraction.
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