THE GRAND CANYON

It is impossible to convey, either with words or with pictures, what you feel when you first see this place.  The much over-used 'awesome', truly fits.  It takes your breath. It makes you shake your head in disbelief.  There is no way to wrap your brain around the enormity and the majesty of this particular space on our planet.

Michael's look, when he got his first glimpse, says it all.

It is wide.

It is deep.

It is amazing!

A few facts.

The park contains over one million acres.

It is from 5000 to 6000 feet from the rim to the river.

Aproximately 5 million people visit each year.

The oldest rocks in the canyon date back 2000 million years.

The canyon inself, however, is ONLY 5 or 6 million years old.

For more information, visit,

http://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm

It is hard not to offer to take pictures for other people so their entire family can be included. Michael became the photographer for several families at this look out point. Somehow, we failed to get the favor returned. We simply forgot to ask.

We had so much fun with this group from South Korea.

And I couldn't resist this face!

Unbelievably, you can, in many places get right to the edge of what would be a deadly fall.

And we saw more than a few people doing what I would consider really stupid behaviour!

Yep...that guy is standing about 2 feet from the edge.

But, the winner of stupid human of the year has to go to this mother. You can't see him in the photo, but she has her small child standing right in front of her on that rock. A strong wind could have blown him right off.

Of course, Michael had to scare us just a little, too. Although he assures me that he really was on a safe path.

It looks like he's walking off into nothing, doesn't it?

I swear he's enjoying scaring me!

I especially loved the many gnarly old trees.

We didn't see much wild life.  Just this ground squirrel

this raven

and several California Condors which have been successfully introduced into the canyon.

One of my favorite spots was this place.

It's called The Watchtower.  I love the building and the story behind it.

http://www.scienceviews.com/parks/watchtower.html

Here is where Michael just HAD to scare Grandma one more time by going way out there on that little bitty point...far, far away!

Here's the picture he took looking back toward us.

He said there are a few places on this trail that are extremely narrow with a pretty steep drop on either side.

It's so hard to decide which pictures to include and which ones to leave out.  I took, literally, hundreds, although between the heavily overcast skies and smoke in the atmosphere from a nearby controlled burn, my pictures didn't turn out really good.  Still...........I just have to show you a few more.......

I am so grateful to the Creator of The Grand Canyon and so grateful that we got to share this trip with our Michael!