Awestruck at The Grand Canyon

There are many words that have been used to describe the Grand Canyon; words like awesome, magnificent, inspiring, overwhelming. None do justice in describing how you feel when you first view this geological wonder! We stayed at the South Rim and spent the first day walking along the upper edge of that rim.....

trying to catch a glimpse of the Colorado River twisting its way over a mile below us. Can you see it?

Perhaps if I zoom in....

By the way, that's the start of some Class 5 rapids, the highest classification of river rapids.

We awoke the next morning to an extremely strong wind. Did not want to be up on the edge of the canyon in that weather so we took a tour into the village and viewed the Grand Canyon movie on the IMAX screen. It's amazing how real its feels when you watch that big screen!

Later in the afternoon the wind died down a little and we got a little more adventurous. Obviously the Grand Canyon is a hiker's paradise. We decided to tackle one of the more well-travelled trails known as Bright Angel Trail. This trail leads all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, but if you decide to travel that far you really must stay overnight. The rule of thumb is 2 to 1. For every minute you travel down the canyon, it will take two minutes to climb back up. Given the late hour of the day, we went down for 30 minutes and then took the full 60 to return to the rim.

It's difficult to capture the essence of what we did, but to try and give you an idea, we started at the buildings in the top left-hand corner of the photo and travelled down to the the edge of the steep canyon wall in the botttom left-hand corner.

Had we had more time (and stamina), and continued down the trail this is where we would have travelled.

eventually reaching Phantom Ranch and the Colorado.

Grand Canyon Village has an excellent shuttle bus system for travelling around the park so you don't have to drive, and bonus - the drivers don't get lost! The park also has huge ravens - so big that you have to cover your sewer hose or they will destroy it!

Our last few days in Vegas were quite a bit of fun! We went to see Spamalot - a Broadway musical spoof of Camelot. It stars John O'Hurley, the current host of Family Feud. It was a hoot. We've decided that as far as the Vegas experience goes, we prefer Fremont Street to the Strip. While everything on the Strip is glamourous and expensive, it is also so expansive that you can walk for three blocks and still be alongside the same hotel. Fremont St is much more compact so you can pop in and out of the different casinos and bars with ease. I even managed to win $45 on the 5 cent slot machines - look out pension plan, here I come!

That's all for now. See you next week, probably from somewhere in New Mexico.