SBP4 - The Grand Canyon

Here are Parts One, Two, and Three of our trip.

Wednesday we went to the Grand Canyon. It's about a 3 hour drive from our friend's house so we left as early as we could... which after staying up until midnight meant we left about 9am. The countryside was pretty in the desert sort of way, but unfortunately we were driving right into the sun so I didn't watch much of it.

And here is the Grand Canyon.

This is the view from the top of the trail down into the canyon (I actually wrote trial instead of trail... rather appropriate considering there are signs at the top warning you about how hard it is, not to attempt hiking up and down in one day, to bring lots of water, etc.)

See, we were actually there!

If you click on this picture to blow it up you can see the trail down at the bottom of the valley (running up and down in the picture). That's about 3 miles down. We hiked down for about half an hour and then turned around and came back up.

This is what Brian and Cory really think of Mom taking all those pictures...

A view looking North East. from a different viewpoint.

Wow, Mom, it's so big!

A little perspective.

The canyon just over Brian's right shoulder has a trail at the bottom (Bright Angel) that snakes up the left side to the North Rim and a lodge over there that's only open in the summer. The North Rim is closed during the winter, it's way less accessible and since it's 1,000 feet higher gets a lot more snow. There was still some snow on the south side where we were when we were hiking down the trail. Made for a nice muddy (poopy) mess on the trail considering all the people and mules that go up and down every day. Yum...

And then when we got home (driving into the sun on the way back as well) we got to open Cory's birthday presents!

Look, Mom, a new hat! (we'll see if he can keep it on, here he's trying to take it off!)

Poor little guy had a reaction to the sunscreen from Monday so his face was all broken out.

The kids saw that Cory really liked their Duplos so they decided they wanted to share and gave him a bag full. He loved it and I just thought that was so sweet that they were willing to give away their own toys!

Wow, these are all for me!

We stuffed them in random corners of our suitcases... I wonder what the security people thought seeing them go through the scanners! Brian's bag had a tag in it saying it had been checked...