“Heavens! Do they expect us to climb _that_?” exclaimed Toby when we sighted the beginning of the twenty-six mile road to the Park. A mountain stood on its hind legs before us, and pawed the air. The white gash of road leading uncompromisingly up its side showed us all too well what to expect. At the summit, a naked erosion rose like Gibraltar for a hundred feet from its green setting. Whether we should have to conquer that bit of masonry we did not know, but if we had to, I knew our chances were not good. I clung to the story I had heard of a one-armed girl who had driven a Ford to the top, and then collapsed. We ought to do at least as well, we reasoned, reserving the right to collapse on arrival. At the base of the hill I telephoned the superintendent of the Park, at a switchboard by the roadside, as commanded by placard. “Come ahead, and ’phone at the top,” he said. His voice was most matter-of-fact. From that moment, anticlimax reigned. Roads are never as bad as report makes them, and this besides being far less narrow than many mountain passes we had been through, was beautifully graded on the turns, and in excellent condition. We passed several steep ravines at curves,--one where a car had overturned the week previous,--but none was as bad as we had been led to expect. Thanks to the sane regulation making it a one way road we had nothing to fear from traffic. Valleys, blue and red with a magnificent sweep of flowers, dropped down, down, and new mountains rose from unexpected coverts. We circled the one we were on, pausing at the summit for the view over the emerald slopes far below. We reached the base of our Gibraltar, but saw on nearer approach that we could no more have climbed it then we could climb Washington Monument on the outside. Instead we rounded it, and dipped up and down another hillside, overlooking an eastern valley. Here the road was delightfully planned so that we could look far ahead over our course, and coast or climb without fearing the next turn. Well named is the Park, so surprisingly green after the desert. In an hour and three-quarters we had covered the twenty-six miles to the inn. This, we were told by the stage drivers, was fairly near record time. We met a man soon after our arrival, to whom we mentioned that we had recently come from the Rainbow Bridge. “Oh,” said he, “were you in the party where the mule threw the man off into the cactus?” News travels like that in the West.