Trans-America Overland Part 14: Grand Canyon to Page via Desert View Drive, US-89 and Horseshoe Bend

Horseshoe Bend — the Colorado River turns around a sandstone promontory below the overlook.

Part 13 brought Shehzadi from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon via Fresno, Route 66 and two Punjabi dhabas. After the overnight stop in Tusayan, we left before dawn for Mather Point, then turned the truck east along the South Rim and north toward Page.

The route was short by expedition standards but vertically ambitious: Grand Canyon viewpoints at sunrise, the Little Colorado River Gorge, folded rock beside US-89, a repaired mountain road and Horseshoe Bend nearly 1,000 feet above the Colorado River. The Southwest had placed several billion years of rock beside 130 miles of pavement. We supplied the petrol.

Trans-America Part 14 — Post Summary

From the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, we watched sunrise at Mather Point, followed Desert View Drive past its eastern overlooks, crossed the Little Colorado River Gorge country, and turned north at Cameron. US-89 then carried Shehzadi beneath Echo Cliffs, over the repaired Antelope Pass road, and to Horseshoe Bend before we stopped in Page.

What's Covered
🌅	Mather Point — Grand Canyon sunrise and South Rim elk
🗼	Eastern South Rim — Yaki Point, mining history, tilted rocks and Mary Colter’s tower
🏞️	Little Colorado River Gorge — dry overlook, turquoise baseflow and sacred geography
🧠	Grand Canyon then and now — railings, managed overlooks and memories from earlier visits
🛣️	Cameron northbound — Painted Desert badlands, Echo Cliffs and Hopi clan marks
⛰️	Antelope Pass — storm views and the highway rebuilt after a landslide
〰️	Horseshoe Bend — exposed trail, entrenched meander and river camp below
🌙	Page — overnight on Manson Mesa before Antelope Canyon and Lake Powell
🧭	Next stop — Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell, Tuba City and Route 66

We drove Shehzadi, our 2024 Toyota Tundra, from the Grand Canyon’s South Rim to Page, Arizona, using Desert View Drive (AZ-64) to Cameron and US-89 north over Antelope Pass. The route covered about 130 miles from sunrise to evening, with the long pauses belonging to viewpoints rather than traffic.

Route: Grand Canyon South Rim, AZ → Desert View Drive (AZ-64) → Cameron, AZ → Antelope Pass → Horseshoe Bend → Page, AZ
Method: Overland by truck on AZ-64 and US-89
Distance / Time: Approx. 130 miles / sunrise to evening
Themes: canyon sunrise · South Rim viewpoints · Navajo Nation highway country · river geology
Vehicle: Shehzadi (2024 Toyota Tundra)

Route at a Glance

1. Mather Point — sunrise and elk on the South Rim
2. Desert View Drive — viewpoints from Yaki Point to the Watchtower
3. Little Colorado River Gorge — roadside overlook east of the park
4. Grand Canyon then and now — railings and memories from earlier visits
5. US-89 north — Painted Desert country and Echo Cliffs
6. Antelope Pass — summer rain and a rebuilt highway
7. Horseshoe Bend — exposed trail and the Colorado River below
8. Page — overnight before Antelope Canyon and Lake Powell
9. Next stop — Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell, Tuba City and Route 66

Grand Canyon Sunrise at Mather Point

Mather Point — we reached the rim before the sun did.

We reached Mather Point before dawn. A small crowd faced east, speaking quietly as if volume might delay sunrise. The canyon was still a dark mass with no obvious bottom.

Grand Canyon sunrise — the eastern sky brightened while the inner canyon remained in shadow.

Light reached the upper rim first. The lower walls stayed purple and gray while the sky changed behind them.

Grand Canyon sunrise — warm light reached the upper cliffs first.

Then the ledges began separating from one another. Grand Canyon exposes rocks as old as about 1.8 billion years, although the canyon itself is far younger, carved mainly during the past five to six million years. Sunrise makes that sequence look briefly color-coded, which is unusually considerate of geology.

South Rim morning — a flowering stalk caught the new light beside the canyon.

By full daylight, the rim plants and rocks had joined the performance. The Colorado River appeared only in narrow pieces from Mather Point, far below the overlooks.

South Rim morning — the rocks warmed faster than the people.

Ravens crossed the brightening air as the shadows retreated into the side canyons. We stayed until full daylight, then returned toward the road.

Grand Canyon elk — a roadside reminder that calm-looking wildlife remains wildlife.

An elk stood beside the wet pavement. Rocky Mountain elk are not native to the park: Arizona’s current herds descend from animals brought from Yellowstone between 1913 and 1928, and elk were first documented inside Grand Canyon National Park in 1966. They may look bored by vehicles, but the park advises keeping at least 100 feet away. Elk have hooves, antlers and no customer-service department.

Desert View Drive: South Rim Viewpoints

Grand Canyon National Park — back at the entrance for another South Rim visit.

After prickly pear pancakes at the resort, we entered the park again and followed Desert View Drive. AZ-64 runs 23 miles from Grand Canyon Village to Desert View, passing a series of eastern South Rim overlooks before leaving the park.

Yaki Point

Yaki Point — the three of us above the eastern South Rim.

Yaki Point is the exception to the driving route. Private vehicles are barred, so access is by park shuttle, bicycle or foot. The overlook faces O’Neill Butte and the upper switchbacks of the South Kaibab Trail, the direct rim-to-river route opened by the National Park Service in 1925.

Grandview Point

Grandview Point — the Colorado River appears between the canyon walls far below.

Grandview Point looks toward Horseshoe Mesa and the Colorado River. The Grandview Trail first served people gathering mineral pigments and later became the route to copper workings on the mesa. Mining debris still survives below the rim, while the river carries on with less paperwork.

Moran Point

Moran Point — one of us against a great deal of exposed geologic time.

Moran Point bears the name of painter Thomas Moran, who joined John Wesley Powell’s 1873 expedition through the region. The viewpoint reveals tilted Grand Canyon Supergroup rocks above the darker basement rocks, making it one of the clearer places to see that the canyon walls are not simply a neat stack of horizontal layers.

Lipan Point and Desert View Watchtower

At Lipan Point, a long reach of the Colorado River and the tilted Supergroup layers came into view. Unkar Delta lies beside the river below; Ancestral Puebloan communities farmed corn, beans and squash there centuries ago. The unsupported legend about spirits guarding the site has been retired. The river seemed capable of managing its own security.

Desert View — the two of us at the rim near Mary Colter’s Watchtower.

Farther east, Mary Colter’s 70-foot Desert View Watchtower rises above the rim. Completed in the 1930s, the building draws on ancestral Puebloan architecture while using a concealed steel frame. Hopi artist Fred Kabotie painted murals inside. We climbed through the tower and looked toward the Painted Desert, then continued toward the East Entrance.

Little Colorado River Gorge and Cameron

Little Colorado River Gorge — pale water and a mostly dry channel below the roadside overlook.

East of the park, we stopped above the Little Colorado River Gorge. The channel below us was pale and mostly dry, not electric blue. Farther downstream, Blue Spring sustains clear baseflow rich in dissolved calcium; when runoff is absent, carbonate chemistry can give the lower river its famous turquoise color. Storm water can turn it brown again, because desert rivers are allowed to change their minds.

Little Colorado River Gorge — Shehzadi at the paved overlook east of the Grand Canyon.

The lower Little Colorado and its confluence with the Colorado are sacred to several affiliated tribes. Hopi emergence traditions are tied to that lower river country, not to this roadside overlook itself. We kept the travel description at the level supported by public sources and left protected knowledge where it belongs.

Shehzadi returned to AZ-64 and rolled east to Cameron, where we turned north onto US-89.

Grand Canyon Then and Now

Desert View Drive — the three of us behind a railing that was absent on some earlier visits.

This was our fourth South Rim visit across roughly a quarter century. Some overlooks now have more railings, marked paths and managed viewing areas than we remembered. The canyon has not become less wild; the visitor edge has become less casual. With millions of people arriving in busy years, that is less romance than crowd control.

US-89 North Beneath Echo Cliffs

US-89 reunited us with the highway we had left near Kanab after the Moab-to-Kanab route through red-canyon country. North of Cameron, the road ran between Painted Desert badlands and the long wall of Echo Cliffs.

The cliffs mark the Echo Cliffs Monocline, a great fold separating the Marble Plateau to the west from the Kaibito Plateau to the east. Their exposed sedimentary rocks once extended across much more of this country before erosion removed the connecting layers.

Diné traditions of the Hero Twins and Yé’iitsoh belong to this wider region; this published Hero Twins account offers more context than a borrowed one-line legend. The road also passed the wider Tutuveni area. Archaeological study identifies Tutuveni as the Southwest’s largest known concentration of Puebloan clan symbols, many made by Hopi initiates traveling toward the Grand Canyon on ceremonial salt pilgrimages.

Antelope Pass Vista and the Rebuilt US-89

Antelope Pass Vista — a broad US-89 pullout above the high-desert country south of Page.

North of the US-89A junction, US-89 climbed toward Antelope Pass Vista. The mapped pullout opened above the Marble Plateau and the folded country along Echo Cliffs. The wider horizon reached toward the Vermilion Cliffs country, while Navajo Mountain stood beneath rain to the northeast. Marble Canyon belonged to the distant river corridor, not to a chasm directly below the parking area.

Antelope Pass Vista — rain crossed the distant cliffs while the pullout stayed dry.

Rain moved across the distance while we stayed beside the pullout.

Antelope Pass Vista — the storm kept its distance, which was considerate.

The clouds darkened the plateaus in broad strips. Northern Arizona was apparently testing several lighting settings at once.

US-89 near Antelope Pass — Shehzadi beside the red roadcut.

Beside Shehzadi, the highway cut through red sandstone before dropping toward Page.

Antelope Pass Vista — vehicles, roadside stalls and red cliffs across the wide pullout.

The pullout was busy with vehicles and roadside stalls, but the view remained wide enough to absorb all of them.

Antelope Pass — rain moved across the broad country below the highway.

US-89 here carries a recent scar. A landslide on February 20, 2013, buckled the road south of Page and forced a 23-mile closure. ADOT removed about one million cubic yards of material, shifted a 1,500-foot section of highway and built a rock buttress before reopening the route on March 27, 2015. The repaired road now looks ordinary, which is the highest compliment most road engineering receives.

The broad river-cut country recalled Canyonlands National Park earlier in the expedition, but Antelope Pass delivered its scale through a windshield rather than a backcountry track.

Horseshoe Bend Above the Colorado River

Horseshoe Bend — the two of us at the protected section of the rim.

Just south of Page, we parked at Horseshoe Bend. The trail is about 1.5 miles round trip. It is short, exposed and hot in July, three facts that cooperate with unusual efficiency.

Horseshoe Bend trail — a short, exposed walk with very little interest in shade.

The path crosses open sandstone and sand before reaching the protected section of the rim. Much of the edge remains unfenced.

Horseshoe Bend — the river completed most of a circle below us.

Below us, the Colorado River makes a roughly 270-degree turn through sandstone about 1,000 feet beneath the overlook. Horseshoe Bend is an entrenched meander: the river established its curve before regional uplift, then cut downward as the Colorado Plateau rose.

Boats and tents were visible on a sandy bench beside the river. The map pin labels the site “8 Mile Bar Camps”.

Below Horseshoe Bend — boats and tents occupied a sandy river bench nearly 1,000 feet below.

From the rim, all we could verify was a boat-access river camp far below. It is not a quick roadside campground for small RVs. Gravity has firm opinions on that plan.

We had seen another great Colorado River bend at Dead Horse Point in Utah. Horseshoe Bend offers the cleaner single curve; Dead Horse Point layers the river inside a larger maze of canyons. We still slightly preferred the latter’s solitude, though the river did not request a ranking.

Page Overnight on Manson Mesa

We checked into our hotel in Page. The city was planned in 1957 for workers building Glen Canyon Dam and sits on Manson Mesa above the Colorado River corridor. It later took the name of former Bureau of Reclamation commissioner John C. Page.

Tomorrow’s route would begin with Antelope Canyon, still our favorite slot canyon, and Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir by storage capacity, before turning south through the Navajo Nation. We had already met the Colorado’s larger reservoir at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam.

Watch our dashcam recording of the drive from the Grand Canyon to Page through Cameron, Echo Cliffs and Antelope Pass, ending at the Horseshoe Bend parking area.

Video: Grand Canyon to Page on AZ-64 and US-89, through Cameron, Echo Cliffs and Antelope Pass to the Horseshoe Bend parking area.

For this expedition, the route made the map fold inward. At sunrise, the Colorado River was a narrow glimpse deep inside the Grand Canyon. By late afternoon, the same river curled directly below our boots at Horseshoe Bend. Shehzadi covered 130 road miles; the river supplied the geologic distance.

Next Stop: Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell and Tuba City

Part 15 continues from Page to Antelope Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell, Tuba City and Route 66 toward Flagstaff. It begins with water held behind concrete, moves into sandstone cut by flash floods and then follows US-89 through Navajo Nation country.

Reference route map of The Vagabond Couple’s 9,000-mile USA & Mexico overland roundtrip: Map-1 and Map-2.

- The Vagabond Couple and Shehzadi