Grand Canyon

One of the main reasons we decided to risk the weather and stay in Flagstaff (its over 7500' in altitude and gets snow this time of year) was so we could go see the Grand Canyon. Its about an hours drive north of Flagstaff. The western road is windy through forests and is a lovely drive. 

We've all heard of the Grand Canyon and even though Grammie and I have traveled through this area a few times, we've never seen it. We've seen a lot of wonderful sights and wasn't expecting much, just a big ditch. But, it's just somewhere you have to go see. After walking up a trail from the parking lot, we rounded a corner and this is what we saw. Our jaws dropped. We've never seen anything as awesome. 

We were finally able to take our eyes off the awesome view long enough to have our picture taken. Notice we have our winter coats on. Its below freezing and the wind is bitter. We were told to dress warm and we're glad we did. 

At various places along the rim are lookouts where you can get the best views of the big ditch. Its over 10 miles across where I'm standing and thousands of feet deep. 

There are hundreds of miles of hiking trails. Some will take you right down to the canyon floor but, at 7000' we're not going to go too far down. Not as high as Machu Picchu, but you can still feel the lack of air here. 

One of the great things about the canyon is that they've kept it as pristine as possible. There has been no development of any kind below the rim. That means that even the hiking trails are very basic with no guard rails of any kind. Where I'm standing, it's straight down for thousands of feet. I can't believe they don't lose a few people every year.

Hopefully you can see the trail below. It goes from where I was standing to the valley floor. Its a goats path that's miles long with lots of switchbacks. We might have gotten to the bottom but I can't see us ever getting back up. 

There is a hiking trail which follows the rim of the canyon for miles and goes from one fabulous lookout point to another. We spent most of the day hiking the rim trail. There was a lot of up and down but nothing too strenuous. The views were fantastic and the hike well worth it. 

There are no guard rails along this path either. With the wind blowing strong, you don't stand too near the edge unless you hang onto something. Based on this tree, it looks like the wind blows over the rim a lot. 

There are numerous lookouts along the rim trail and they have guard rails. Usually the lookouts are jutting out over the canyon and are quite narrow. Grammie would never have gone near the edge if there hadn't been a rail there. In the distant centre lies the Colorado river which carved all of the Grand Canyon over millions of years. Its hard to believe that one river did all that. Just look at that puny little stream and all those big hills. Just for perspective though, the part of the river we can see is over 100' wide and the rapids in the centre are over 20 feet high. 

At the end of the trail is a stone building with lunch counter so we stopped here. You won't get this kind of view in any other cafeteria. To save congestion and pollution, free buses drive the whole south rim so after walking the trails, we hopped a bus back. Appreciated sitting for awhile.

That's what most of the lookouts are like. Isn't that awesome? With all our travels, we thought we might be getting a bit jaded until we saw this. The Grand Canyon sounds like such a cliche tourist trap but we were totally blown away. They've done an excellent job of preservation and it still looks like it must have long before man came. We give it a ten. 

Taking the east road back to Flagstaff was totally different from the one we came on. Nothing but desert and canyons. All in all, a great day for seeing mother nature in all her glory.

I have attached a video that hopefully you can open. Its hard to get the full perspective of the Grand Canyon in a picture so I thought I'd try a video. See what you think.