When we arrived and I got a first view of the canyon, I was taken back immediately with the vast immenseness of what was in front of me. I did not expect the canyon to be this big, but I guess that's why they call it the Grand Canyon. The many colors coming from the canyon against the sunlight looked out of this world as well.
We only had about a good half day at the Grand Canyon so we couldn't do many of the activities that you can do there, but we did want to hike one of the trails, even though we knew we wouldn't make it all the way down. As we started our hike, we heard the thunder in the background, amplified in the canyon. We did decide to continue but about a good mile down in the canyon, we got hit by a huge rainstorm. We tried to find some trees to take cover under but didn't have much luck and we got wet pretty quickly. We pondered for a bit whether to continue hiking down, but the temperature had already dropped by 20 degrees down to the low 50's, the wind was blowing hard through the canyon and the path started getting muddy.
So we hiked back up the canyon, getting soaking wet in the process, and made our way back to the car. Of course, by the time we got there, the storm had passed.
Cold and wet, we didn't feel like hiking more so we hit the road and covered the many view points along the rim of the canyon. Several miles further to the east, it was much sunnier, which dried up our clothes very quickly.
As I looked closer, I saw a huge male elk sitting down in the forest, just chilling. So we got out very quickly to shoot some pictures of this amazing animal.
As I was focusing my attention on the elk in front of me, I heard some sounds next to me and noticed a whole herd of elk - about 12 to 15 of them just hanging out. They looked in our direction to keep us in check, but were very calm and did not make a move to run away.
I was so amazed by the beauty of the Grand Canyon and can't wait to go again to spend several days here.
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| View of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon |
I wanna go!!!! So beautiful baby!!!! You are so lucky you were able to go!!!! On another note, that elk looks like he wants to kick your ass!
ReplyDeleteSo glad you got to take in the wonders of this place... catching the national park fever by now (with this and yosemite now)? Too bad most of them are so far away from us in the midwest or east. :( Sarah and I had the luxury of camping there a couple of days, and our hike into the canyon was a little longer, but we need to share stories, as we also got hit by a rainstorm on our way up... amazing how the weather can change so quickly! Stay safe on the road.
ReplyDeleteEli - we got to make it a point to come here one time. It is absolutely amazing.
ReplyDeleteRob - I bet you and Sarah had a great time here. Being here only for about 5 hours, I felt extremely rushed and like I didn't see anything. I think the only way to truly enjoy this is like you guys did - stay here for a couple of days.