Grand Canyon, Arizona - July 13th & 14th

From Las Vegas we headed over the Hoover Dam and to the town of Flagstaff, near(ish) the Grand Canyon, for a night and a Sunday morning meeting there. It was HOT on the way to Flagstaff, and we were getting a little worried about what it’d be like at the Canyon! (not really up for hiking in the sun in 42ºC…) But that thankfully changed as we drove along and it was lovely and cool again J

Lake Mead, which goes into the Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam

Highway bridge over the Hoover Dam

Arizona countryside

We headed to the Grand Canyon after the Sunday morning meeting, and all I can say is WOW. Had heard that no matter how many photos etc that you see of it, you won’t really comprehend the scale of it, and that was definitely right! But all the same, photos are all I have to show for it, so I’ll let them do the talking…

We didn’t end up doing any hiking at all, other than quick little trips on the trails just below the lookouts, as thunderstorms were on the way… But we drove the Desert View drive from the Grand Canyon Village to the ‘village’ of Desert View, and stopped at all the viewpoints along the way – so although the photos probably all seem to look exactly the same, they’re from different points along the canyon looking at different parts!

First view of the Grand Canyon

Lawrie in his Las Vegas sunglasses

The extremely rare (according to the National Park info guide) Californian Condor - massive birds, but didn't see them any closer than this...

Storms over the Grand Canyon

We lounged around in the car for a while after getting to Desert View, keeping an eye on the sky to the side we could see out of the campground, to see the sunset (hoping the rain clouds cleared enough to see it!) – then when we got up, noticed over the other side of the campground a bright pink and orange sky, probably about to disappear… So I ran to the lookout (way too far away without the car to make it in time…) and just missed the fantastic part with the pink sky over the canyon (SO dumb!) but still managed to see the last bit of the sunset… J

Sunset from Desert View, after the lovely pink sky disappeared... :)

So also to try and show the immense scale of the Grand Canyon, which Lawrie was saying before we got there couldn’t possibly be that much bigger than the King’s Canyon in Central Australia: the rim of the King’s Canyon can be walked in a few hours, while even to go from the South Rim to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (just across, not around), is 215 miles (344km). The distance between the rims varies between 1 mile (1.6km) and 18 miles (29km), and the canyon is over 1 mile deep in some areas! So although photos just can’t show the scale, as there’s nothing to compare it to, this thing is BIG!

Another smaller canyon nearby (still part of the Grand Canyon area)