The very grand Grand Canyon

This was my first visit ever to the Grand Canyon.  I finally made it!!  I can only repeat what others have told me - the Grand Canyon is very BIG.  It is the only hole in the ground that can be seen from space.  It is the one natural feature in the U.S. that people say everyone MUST see.  No camera can capture how large this hole in the ground is, because no wide-angle lens is big enough.  Even my iPhone camera couldn't capture it, and it has a fairly wide view.

By the way, we stayed at a campground inside the national park, which was great.  It was a 15 minute walk to the rim, and shuttle buses left the campground every 7 minutes.  It doesn't get better than that.

I know everyone has seen photos of the Grand Canyon, but this post must include a few.  My favorites are those that include something in the foreground to indicate scale.  Do you get the point?

Here are a few more photos:

Look at all the colors!

So, for a little history.  There are other canyons, but this is the only one where several conditions converged to result in its gigantic proportions.  1) Lots of soft sandstone, which erodes easily;  2) Layered between harder metamorphic and igneous rocks that protect some of the sandstone from eroding;  3) The arid conditions of the southwest, which can result in flash floods where waters rage with immense power, carrying sand, trees, and rocks, pounding away at the canyon walls;  4)  A downhill trajectory helps - the Colorado River falls in elevation at an alarming rate, so gravity serves as a force;  5)  And finally, six million years. 

Six million years is not a great amount of time geologically, but the Colorado River is six million years old, and has been flowing through the southwest constantly through all those years.  The oldest rocks in the canyon, which are revealed at the bottom-most levels, are 2,000 million years old.  So the Colorado River is young in comparison.  There's the river - way down there at the bottom of the gorge!  It looks benign here, but it is October.  Wait for the spring, when it flows with greater volume!

A favorite activity at the canyon is watching the sunset.  People sit all along the rim, watching and waiting.  It's like watching a symphony of light and color.

How about a little bit of botany?  Here are a few plants that populate the rim, at 7,000 feet, starting with a wild rose:

Interesting seed dispersal methods abound (mostly by wind, at this time of year):

 

 

Gnarled junipers and bristle pines add interest:

The banana yucca was a very important plant to the native Americans:

Mormon tea, used by the native Americans long before the Mormons arrived:

I loved the tassels (seeds) on this grass:

 

 The great number of these twisted old trees are an indication of how harsh the environment can be on the canyon rim:

I could go on and on, I took more photos here than anywhere else.  I could talk about Mary Colter's architecture, the animals (lots of elk and mule deer, rabbits and squirrels and pikas), ancient native American ruins, more Grand Canyon photos, but then no one would have time to read it.  So, I will stop here and move on to our next stop, Flagstaff, Arizona.