Sunday October 27, South Rim Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon.

It has been an odd sort of a day. Set off this morning with Page on Lake Powell as our destination. Had to retrace our way back out of the park then headed east to the Colorado River, a stunning drive that took us along the foothills of the Vermillion Cliffs. This part of Northern Arizona is so hard to describe, the colours and the textures of the huge cliffs that seem to be everywhere just leave you with your mouth open. It is arid country which has huge monsoon rains in the early summer, there are large gulches that are now dry, but you can see where huge amounts of water have poured through.

The old Navajo bridge over the Colorado River.

More of my clouds!!

Crossed over the Colorado River at the Navajo Bridge, and planned on taking Route 89 back to Page….but then remembered that it was closed due to a huge slip earlier in the year. The detour meant driving a lot further south before returning to Page, so it seemed more logical to do the South Rim of the Grand Canyon first.

220 miles later we arrived at the Canyon, the drive in via a few view points was amazing. We organised a campsite, then drove back to the Canyon Rim for sunset. By this time I could see we were in for a beauty, there were lots of clouds around and realised that we were running out of time to catch it. Finally found a parking spot, I ran with my camera and Ian followed with the tripod (he is well trained!)!!! There were quite a number of people sitting and taking photos at the lookout we went to, it was quite surreal, everyone was quiet….the light was just touching the tops of the canyon and the colour reflected on them was absolutely magical. In fact it felt quite spiritual. The Grand Canyon surpassed my wildest dreams at that moment, now I know why everyone talks about coming here.

We moved around the point to catch the last of the sunset and came across two artists painting the scene.

It has been a great day, not at all what we intended! 

Lots of Canyon pictures today....couldn't help myself, it was just breathtaking.