Author – Kate
Based In – The Grand Canyon South Rim, Arizona
Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157615911834580/
We were really looking forward to hiking into the grand canyon but the 40 – 60 mph winds forecast for that day (funnily enough nothing to do with Grants posterior) made climbing down into the canyon seem a bit risky so we decided to do the trail along the top of the canyon instead. One minute in and we’d already seen four of the local mule deer so it loo
ked like it was going to be mucho impressive walk. I had always pictured the canyon to be two cliffs facing each other with a deep deep gap in the middle and I expected that the distance between the cliffs would be between 1 and 100 meters across. I pictured myself looking down into the deep gap and that being the really impressive part and being able to wave at the people on the other side of the gap.
That’s not exactly how it is in reality and for me the really impressive part turned out to be the crazy colours and the massive scale of it. If you’ve been to the Isle of White in England and bought one of the tacky souvenir sand in a glass shaped [Eiffel tower/guitar/other unrelated shaped] object then you’ll have seen something similar to the colours. If not, our pictures give a bit of an idea but our little camera is getting a bit worn out by the trip and so doesn’t fully capture the kaleidoscope of browns, purples, reds, oranges and yellows. When you stand on the rim for as far as you can see there are crazy shapes cut into the earth. There isn’t just the one main canyon, there are mini canyons running throughout so the effect is you can’t even see where the opposite side of the canyon fully kicks in. There aren’t any clean lines because I guess nature doesn’t work like that. Apparently the canyon gets 50ft wider every million years mainly through wind corrosion and on a windy day like today that wasn’t too hard to imagine.
Its funny how tourists often leave their common sense at ho
me because even though trees were being blown onto the path by the strong gusts not many people seemed to have a sense of danger while standing so close to the edge of the chasm. We saw so many people sending their grandma / small children out to stand on dangerous looking ledges for photo ops. We also saw small children trying to get animals out of their hiding holes much like Molly does and so I was half expecting to see on the news that night an outbreak of bitten children with rabies in the region and a few people having gone over the side.
Unlike all of the fearless people we were seeing after 1.5 hours of walking the wind was getting a bit scary for me and the altitude was tiring us out so we switched gears and went to the IMAX to watch the Grand Canyon IMAX movie. In short it was rubbish, the highlight was the power going off half way through but it came back on so we had to stay till the end. The movie tried to provide insight into the first users of the canyon but it wasn’t really gripping and so the $25 tickets seemed a bit steep and we didn’t bother buying the $30 DVD. We are staying in Williams which is a cute historic route 66 town so after a quick swim that night we headed out for dinner in one to a historic place for food, nah not really we went for burritos & fajitas in the local Irish / Mexican restaurant. I basically got no sleep because of how full I was so might skip eating everything in site for a while.
Tomorrow were off to Sedona to get our hike on.
Based In – The Grand Canyon South Rim, Arizona
Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157615911834580/
We were really looking forward to hiking into the grand canyon but the 40 – 60 mph winds forecast for that day (funnily enough nothing to do with Grants posterior) made climbing down into the canyon seem a bit risky so we decided to do the trail along the top of the canyon instead. One minute in and we’d already seen four of the local mule deer so it loo
ked like it was going to be mucho impressive walk. I had always pictured the canyon to be two cliffs facing each other with a deep deep gap in the middle and I expected that the distance between the cliffs would be between 1 and 100 meters across. I pictured myself looking down into the deep gap and that being the really impressive part and being able to wave at the people on the other side of the gap.That’s not exactly how it is in reality and for me the really impressive part turned out to be the crazy colours and the massive scale of it. If you’ve been to the Isle of White in England and bought one of the tacky souvenir sand in a glass shaped [Eiffel tower/guitar/other unrelated shaped] object then you’ll have seen something similar to the colours. If not, our pictures give a bit of an idea but our little camera is getting a bit worn out by the trip and so doesn’t fully capture the kaleidoscope of browns, purples, reds, oranges and yellows. When you stand on the rim for as far as you can see there are crazy shapes cut into the earth. There isn’t just the one main canyon, there are mini canyons running throughout so the effect is you can’t even see where the opposite side of the canyon fully kicks in. There aren’t any clean lines because I guess nature doesn’t work like that. Apparently the canyon gets 50ft wider every million years mainly through wind corrosion and on a windy day like today that wasn’t too hard to imagine.
Its funny how tourists often leave their common sense at ho
me because even though trees were being blown onto the path by the strong gusts not many people seemed to have a sense of danger while standing so close to the edge of the chasm. We saw so many people sending their grandma / small children out to stand on dangerous looking ledges for photo ops. We also saw small children trying to get animals out of their hiding holes much like Molly does and so I was half expecting to see on the news that night an outbreak of bitten children with rabies in the region and a few people having gone over the side.Unlike all of the fearless people we were seeing after 1.5 hours of walking the wind was getting a bit scary for me and the altitude was tiring us out so we switched gears and went to the IMAX to watch the Grand Canyon IMAX movie. In short it was rubbish, the highlight was the power going off half way through but it came back on so we had to stay till the end. The movie tried to provide insight into the first users of the canyon but it wasn’t really gripping and so the $25 tickets seemed a bit steep and we didn’t bother buying the $30 DVD. We are staying in Williams which is a cute historic route 66 town so after a quick swim that night we headed out for dinner in one to a historic place for food, nah not really we went for burritos & fajitas in the local Irish / Mexican restaurant. I basically got no sleep because of how full I was so might skip eating everything in site for a while.
Tomorrow were off to Sedona to get our hike on.
P.S. We have given ourselves new Navajo names: One-who-eats-much-fast & she-who-runs-slow
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