Arizona and the Grand Canyon

 We are now in northern Arizona, in Flagstaff, a really cool town about 110km or so from the Grand Canyon. We spent three nights camping at the Grand Canyon and it certainly lives up to its name. We drove to the canyon from southern Utah, passing through some amazing red rock country, including the Vermillion Cliffs, and passed over the Colorado River (which was an amazing green colour) on the Navajo Bridge at Marble Canyon. We also drove through the Painted Desert. It was a spectacular drive, which we almost doubled in length by stopping and taking pictures or slowing down to go "ooh, aah."

Our first encounter with the canyon was in the middle of a thunderstorm, which didn't deter the other tourists, but made for a really dramatic introduction to this truly vast wonder. The thing with the Grand Canyon is that there is not much to do in the national park, apart from the rather lame educational programs they have going on or, barring that, to drive along the rim and take pictures. So it seemed to us that the best thing to do was to take a walk down into the canyon itself, which is for most people who do it the highlight of their visit here.

So on the second day we woke up at 4am, thinking it was 5am (because no one told us that when you cross from Utah into Arizona the time changes back from Mountain time to Pacific time - yes the time thing again) and took a leisurely stroll, in the dark, down into the canyon. We met a super-keen young fellow who's way down the canyon was barred by particularly stubborn mountain goat. We walked with him and shooed the goat along at which point our friend took off at a furious pace to get down to the river. The walk down to the river is particularly long, especially on the way back up, so we opted not to do it, particularly because it had been averaging between 38-40 degrees C and sometimes even hotter in the canyon itself, so we just went to the main look-out point, about 300m (I'm guessing now) above the Colorado River, which was brown at this point. It was truly magnificent sitting in the canyon itself and we were completely alone there, in that breathtaking landscape. We started to see people on the way back up though - lots of people - but we were satisfied and ready to go have some lunch, so we just meandered our way back, moving from one shady spot to the next. At one point Elsje decided that her feet were too hot and she put on her flip-flops. After deciding that that was too easy, she took them off and walked barefoot, to the amazement of some of the other hikers. We thought this was quite funny, so I followed suit and took of my shoes and we hiked barefoot for a good while in the soft, powdery sand, which was actually very pleasant.

All in all it was a beautiful trip to a truly spectacular part of the world.

This elk was just outside our tent at the Grand Canyon campsite