South of Canyon View Information Plaza, Highway 64 turns east for Desert View Drive, a scenic 23-mile stretch along the East Rim. This good paved road is open to personal vehicles year-round, though snow sometimes forces road closures for brief periods in the winter.

From Pipe Creek Vista to Desert View, the road climbs through ponderosa forest to the South Rim’s highest elevations. If you don’t have a car, Xanterra Parks & Resorts offers guided bus tours along this route. The East Rim is much quieter than the Grand Canyon Village and Hermit Road areas, offering relief from summer sun and summer crowds.

The paved turnout just past the intersection is Pipe Creek Vista. Stop for a good view of the central canyon, including Plateau Point and O’Neill Butte, though the views here aren’t as fine as from Yaki Point. Since Yaki Point is closed to private vehicles, many people make do with this easily accessed viewpoint. From here, the Rim Trail is paved all the way west to Maricopa Point, five miles away.

Twelve miles east of the village, Grandview Point is one of the South Rim’s highest overlooks, nearly 7,400 feet. Surrounded by quiet ponderosa pine forest, it’s hard to believe this was once the hotspot at Grand Canyon and home to a hotel, tent cabins, and a mining operation centered on Horseshoe Mesa, visible below the rim. The Grandview Trail starts at the east end of the stone barrier and leads to the mesa, 3,000 feet below.

A couple of miles past Grandview, you’ll see a sign for the Arizona Trail. An access road leads south into Kaibab National Forest and the trailhead, part of a proposed 800-mile hiking, biking, and equestrian trail crossing the state. In another mile, you’ll see the Buggeln picnic area, a shady and peaceful place for lunch. Though the rim is brushy here, you can walk through the forest for glimpses of the Sinking Ship, a rock formation that tilts back toward the rim.

Moran Point, overlooking Red Canyon, is one of the few rim overlooks that wasn’t named for a North American Indian tribe. Moran Point honors artist Thomas Moran, who captured the canyon’s dramatic vistas in drawings and paintings, including Chasm of the Colorado, which hung in the nation’s Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., for many years. Moran was a member of explorer John Wesley Powell’s third canyon expedition, in 1873. His assignment was to sketch scenes that would be converted to engravings for magazine articles about the canyon.

Tusayan Ruin, 25 miles east of the village, was inhabited 800 years ago. This masonry complex of rooms sheltered about 30 people who farmed nearby in the summers, migrating to the canyon’s floor in the winter. Rangers guide daily walks of the ruin. The adjacent museum highlights prehistoric and contemporary Indian cultures of the region and houses a small Grand Canyon Association bookstore. Restrooms are located just west of the building.

Lipan Point has one of the East Rim’s best views, taking in the canyon from its turn west at the Palisades of the Desert to the Inner Gorge. Across the canyon is Cape Royal, and below it, the rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup: soft, colorful layers carved into the hills and valleys above the river’s Unkar Delta. At sunset, the cliffs to the west transform into a variegated stack of purple and gray shadows. Nearby, the challenging Tanner Trail leads to the river.

Navajo Point also has fine views of the colorful Supergroup layers. In 1540, Hopi guides led a detachment from Coronado’s expedition to the rim of Grand Canyon, somewhere in the vicinity of Navajo, Lipan, or Moran Points. Nearby, Hopi trails led into the canyon to sites still considered sacred by the tribe today. We can imagine that the Hopi guides watched silently—and perhaps with some amusement—as the Spanish explorers tried to reach the river, a frustrating and failed endeavor they recorded in expedition journals.

Desert View, the easternmost overlook inside the park, offers views of the Colorado River as it exits Marble Canyon and bends west toward the Inner Gorge. Nearby is the park’s East Entrance Station, also a campground, gas station, general store, snack bar, and bookstore, but the highlight is Mary Colter’s fabulous Watchtower, inspired by the Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi. From the top of the 70-foot tower, you can look east to the Painted Desert.