Day . . .. 10?

On the way home / Grand Canyon / Monument Valley

This will be the last “blog” on the vacation but I will have a trip report sooner or later. So many little stories.

Anyway at the moment we are in Glenwood Springs CO. Amazing Race was here once at the natural hot springs.

Yesterday we were at the Grand Canyon and I THINK we were the only English speaking people there. Mostly French and Germans it seemed.

I have a few photos (ok a lot of photos) that I have posted below. There was a rather huge fire near Kingman (we went through that town but did not cause the fire) that was making everything hazy.

One thing about the Grand Canyon. I have been told that no matter how many times I am told it is amazing I will not understand until I see it.

YUP! There is no way for a photo to capture this Wonder of the World. It is humbling. It’s surreal. My photos in no way give you the feel of this experience.

In the first photo notice the people on the upper left corner.


Again - to get SOME sort of perspective notice the people in the upper right corner.


This next photo has two things. There is the Bright angel trail that snakes out of the left bottom to a cliff. That is 4.6 miles away. And if you look very closely right to the right of the trail you will see a speck of the very large Colorado river.

DJ and I went down the trail for perhaps 1/4 mile. We saw many people coming back and they looked almost dead. Resting every 50 feet. Easy down, hard up. So many parents were letting their 6 years old's run ahead and so many were going to be in BIG trouble on the way back. Honestly, it is very dangerous. The temp drops dramatically all the way down to perhaps 20 degrees hotter.


As you can see, the trail is not THAT wide and when mules pass you must hug the walls. The mules don’t care, they just plod along looking at the butt of the mule ahead of them. They are actually special mules that come from some other country and spend 2 years in training. They actually have to teach then to be afraid of the ledge.

I'll have more photos sooner or later, but on to Sunday.

We left the Camron Trading Post which is in the middle of the desert, nothing for 50 miles in ANY direction. Great place though.

Our goal for the day was actually 100 miles back but we were feeling so good we drove an extra 100.

The main event was Monument Vally.

Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Indian Reservation. “The scene of countless western movies, the valley has come to symbolize the open spaces and rugged landscape of the American West.”

Amazing buttes. These were part of mesa’s but through time have eroded and have become buttes over 1000 ft tall.



This is from the other side.




And lastly - one of the most amazing things on this trip around the southwest are all of the things that are not talked about. You just come across them. A geology major would have a field day. There were so many times we would come crest a ridge and our breath would be taken away with strange and bizarre scenery.

I could have stopped 100 times today. Below is some arch that we stumbled across. The first shot is so you can see how big it is with the tiny people “inside” the arch. We also climbed up there and the view was breath taking.

Another odd thing was a rock formation that we saw when we crested a ridge. It was perhaps 8 miles away when we first saw it. We kept getting closer and closer and finally stopped for a photo op.

There were so many of these oddities that we did not stop for.

America is truly an amazing place that most people who fly to not appreciate. I wish we could have spent more time as each area needed a few weeks to look at. Colorado, Utah, Arizona. Magnicent.


Yea - driving this far is a pain in the butt (literally) but there are so many breath taking things you do not see from 30,000 feet. Driving America (except Nebraska) is the way to go.

Tomorrow (Monday) we are driving across Nebraska, pray for us. The odd thing about driving Nebraska is not getting tired, heck, you point the car in one direction and go straight for the rest of the day.

It’s actually boredom. You get so sick of seeing the same thing hour and hour.

O’well - Be home Tuesday.

Check back from time to time as I'll have stories and more photos. Squirrels taking matter into their own hands. A panoramic of the GC (hopefully). It just takes time to decompress and relax. Right now everything is just to fresh.


Rod and DJ - on the road.