The Grand Canyon

We arrived at the Grand Canyon early Saturday afternoon and checked into "Trailer Village", an RV area about a mile from the South Rim.

I know that we've used superlatives to describe many other national parks, but the Grand Canyon to me is still, well, the "grandest"! We had previously visited here in 1985; as soon as we saw it this time we knew that we'd be back again in far less than another 24 years. (Actually, being a seasonal ranger or employee sounds tempting to me, although I don't know about John :-) ).

When we visited last, I made it a point to wake up early on our second day in order to see the sunrise in the Canyon (excuse the cliche, but that was indeed a "religious experience"). At the time, John decided to sleep in, regretting it since and determined not to do the same this time. We signed up for a Sunrise Bus Tour, meaning that we had to wake up at 3:30 Arizona time to get dressed, get the dogs walked and settled, and walk the half mile to the bus stop by 4:30. Fortunately, we had just come in from Utah which is one hour ahead of Arizona, and hadn't bothered to change our watches for the one night -- adhering to Utah time, the sound of getting up at 4:30 didn't seem quite as painful.

So, here are some of those early morning pictures --- as is typical, they don't come near doing justice to the real thing! Keep in mind that the average distance across the Canyon is 10 miles and the average depth is one mile.