Blogs from Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, United States, North America - page 13

Our route to the Grand Canyon took us right by Hoover Dam. It had been years since we had seen the dam, and neither of us had seen the new bridge there. So we stopped there for a new "look-see" and I walked across the new bridge.....it is very high and has a perfect view of the dam site. It's great to see these 2 wonderful, man-made creations next to each other. After that we drove on to The Grand Canyon NP. We spent 2 nights there at the South rim. I hiked down into the canyon for a mile one day (my profile picture was taken there). We left the park out the East entrance and went to Flagstaff.... read more

From Vegas, we headed east through the desert to the Hoover Dam, which holds back the Colorado River on the border between Nevada and Arizona. This 80-year old structure and Lake Mead upstream of it provide the life-blood to the region, in terms of water and electricity. The massive structure contains two and a half million cubic metres of concrete (enough to build a 2-lane highway east-west across the whole USA!), and at 776 feet the dam is almost as high as the Eiffel Tower. Then a few more hours driving east to another sight that truly defines the word "awesome" - the Grand Canyon. 'Grand' seems a totally inadequate description of this natural wonder - it's a monster of almost indescribable beauty, etched from the desert landscape by the Colorado River over millions of years. ... read more

The Grand Canyon was breathtaking. The color of the canyon walls were a variety of orange, red, yellows that were stacked in giant layers. The first day we set up camp in the Kaibab national forest. The following three days were a a blur of activity ranging from me solo motorbike riding in the outback to Stacy taking a solo hiking trip to the bottom of the canyon and back......28 mile round trip......I of course stayed back at camp, drank beer and made a huge camp fire :)... read more

Left in early for the South Rim, a 130 mile drive. We retraced the road north out of Kaibab Forest that we had traveled after dark two nights before. Spectacular landscape, 2,000 foot cliffs above us, crossing the Colorado river before it enters the Grand Canyon. Drove into the park via the Desert View Road from the east. Stopped at look outs along the way and reached the visitor's center by 3 PM. We stayed to listed to an unhappy ranger give a talk on the endangered Condor then joined Joanie and Tony at our campsite in Williams (55 miles south of the Canyon, much too far away). The next day we rented a car and drove to the Canyon. Took a bus to the the West from the visitor's center and hiked trails along the ... read more

Woke up and it was nice and sunny, great we thought, had pancakes for breakfast to keep me going on the hike – not actually into the canyon but along the rim and off we set. First we walked to the Bright Angel Trail to see where Howard had hiked back out from before, we went a short way along the path down and got to a corner and before I knew it I was running back up the path with my mind going get out get out!!!! See its’ sheer drops and no barriers I just cannot do them!! Howard played about taking photos of the trail paths – he had not seen them properly when he came up before so it was great for him to actually see what he had done. He didn’t ... read more