Recently in Travelogue Category

When I look back at the experiences I had at each one, the best experiences were the ones in which there were very few people around, and the worst were when there were lots of crowds. Just as an example, viewing the famous Delicate Arch at Arches was ruined by a huge group of loud foreign tourists, but when Rachel and I took a hike at Zion that led to a solitary overlook, well, that was a "closer to God" experience.

I think you know where this is going, since you probably know that Grand Canyon is one of the most popular national parks. We got ready and left around 9 a.m. for the 2.5-hour drive to the Grand Canyon, aiming to stop at all the scenic viewpoints along the way that we had missed last night in the dark.

The second one we came to was alongside a beautiful arch bridge over a canyon. I believe it was also a trailhead, which would have been fun to hike if we hadn't been on short time.

After a while, we crossed over to the visitor's center and looked at the offerings, and selected a neat matted series of photos, taken from the same point during three different seasons at the canyon.

What to do now? At this point, we both felt like we needed to stay longer - it's Grand Canyon National Park, after all. But we were tired of fighting the crowds on the main trail, and since we were hoping to make it back to Sedona before sunset, we didn't have time to venture out onto one of the more secluded trails.

So we left. We were told that a full day at the canyon wouldn't be enough, but an hour or so pretty much did it for us. It's incredible, but I sure would like to have seen it without all those people.

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The Grand Canyon is an amazing place, it's nuts when you look at a cliff edge and think, bloimey guvnor (I always think in cockney) that's a long way down. Then you follow it down and there's just as much of a drop again. And again. You think that's the valley floor but then there's another drop until you can eventually see the Colorado river. We had a look from Mather Point near the car park and then strolled down to the information centre when a ranger was doing a talk about the geology. He said if we remembered anything it'd be the four rock types that form the layers in the Canyon. Limestone, sandstone, schist and shale. He was right. It was formed from a combination of plates hitting eachother, a bit of erosion (well a lot lets face it) from the water flow and the angle of the land. He ended the talk by asking what's the most asked question at the park. Someone came up trumps and asked how many people end up falling in each year. The reason that it's possible to fall off is because other than at the lookouts there aren't any barriers between a pleasant stroll and an untimely painful death. The answer is about 5 out of 5 million visitors so the odds were looking ok until I got struck by lightening and bitten by a shark on the way to the shuttle bus. I was singled out by him though as being a member of the demographic most likely to chuck myself in, but he might have spotted me due to my orange hat that was making an appearance to save me from some blazing desert sun.

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