27.4.2012 – 27.4.2012  15 °C

We got going fairly early this morning as D and I wanted to walk part way into the canyon. Our hike (South Kaibab) was about a 4km round trip that took us about 200m or so below the canyon rim. If you have the time you can hike all the way over to the other side of the canyon but you need to allow at least one overnight stop to achieve this. Knowing that we didn’t have the time we just took one of the short hikes into the canyon to really get up and personal!

The canyon has been formed over millions of years of silt deposits. In fact, the canyon was once under the sea! The erosion that we see today has been in effect for the past 600 thousand years with the Colorado river slowly wearing away the layers of rock.

The walk itself wasn’t as bad as it looked when we first went down from the canyon rim.. I was thinking that coming back up was going to be tough going.. not so! Actually, it only took us an extra ten minutes to get up the slope as it took us to get down! The view from the lookout point was definitely worth the short walk as we were able to get out into the canyon and stand on the edge of a cliff… not for the faint hearted J.

Lunch time saw us return to the visitor centre to pick up M and to see a short video on the formation of the canyon and the geological layers that make up the canyon walls (the oldest rock formation in the park is over 2bil years old). We were fortunate on our walk back to the visitor centre in that we saw four condors circling the canyon.. they are majestic animals!

Straight after lunch, we left M in the room to read her book and returned back out to the rim to go for another walk. This time we went from the Yavapai Geology Museum along the rim back to the village. Managed to take some more photos and drink in the beautiful vistas before we decided to return back to our room, have a shower and head out to the oldest hotel (El Tovar) for dinner.

El Tovar is a beautiful old hotel (built in 1905) and is made of huge logs. Dinner wasn’t anything super spectacular but the surrounds made up for it! The hotel is built on the rim itself, so before dinner I had found a spot to attempt to take some sunset photos.. Before the sun had set, I had ditched my camera.. it was just too cold sitting waiting for the sun to go down! (I guess I’ll need plenty of clothes to get up early tomorrow for a sun rise shot!)

Song of the Day– Simon and Garfunkle, El Condor Pasa