One Huge Ditch

If anyone tries to tell you – “once you've seen one canyon, you've seen them all” - it's just not true. We've seen quite a few canyons in the past couple of weeks, and they are all so unique.

The interesting thing is that most of our sightseeing in the southwest area is interrelated and connected to one another. The canyons make up what is called the Grand Staircase. About 10 million years ago, the Earth pulled apart, moving huge blocks along the fault lines. Streams began to remove the sediment removing top layers and exposing bottom layers. The staircase begins with Bryce Canyon and makes it way down the Colorado Plateau (Zion Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, Chocolate Cliffs, etc.) until the final “step” of the staircase – the Grand Canyon. And all of them are quite distinct.

I think the most impressive thing about the Grand Canyon is its sheer size. It has 277 river miles running through it, it's 18 miles across and a mile deep. And the land surrounding the canyon is flat as can be for the most part, so the stark contrast is almost eerie. It appears as if the Earth just opened up and swallowed whatever had been standing there prior.

We picked out our campsite (which Phill was pretty certain was the same site he and Garrett had the first time he was here), and then went to find a spot to watch the sunset. We were at the east end of the canyon looking west. I found the color of the rock formations in the canyon fascinating. Our eyes perceive the color as blue, with the darkest blue in the foreground and the lightest blue against the horizon. Once the sun started setting, some blue colors turned to shades of red and orange. It was spectacular! I don't know if I've ever seen so many layers of color. The canyon appears to go on forever until is sort of disappears into the horizon. It's just amazing how large – and old – it is. Some of the rock at the bottom dates back as far as 1,800+ million years.

After the sun set, we returned to our campsite, made a fire, poured ourselves some good ol' Carlo Rossi wine, and chatted until midnight. We talked about everyone that we wish was here with us seeing this stuff. We miss all of you and wish you could experience these things with us.

We left through the main entrance this morning and stopped at Mather Viewpoint on our way out. Phill remembered a ledge that he and Garrett had discovered last time that he wanted to get our picture on. Again, I'm not normally afraid of heights at all, but by the fourth or fifth picture, I'd had about enough fun for one morning. I heard a Ranger this morning talking to some tourists that were asking how many people fall into the canyon in a year. He said only two or three on average. I don't want to be part of that statistic! It's amazing – you're completely on solid ground, yet knowing how high up you are and how far you could fall suddenly makes you walk a little wobbly. I don't know what that phenomenon is, but I didn't like it.

We're headed now to Death Valley. It's going to start getting even hotter...