Em and Jon’s Wedding

I’m reminded of the old Mike Harding sketch about how everything is bigger and heavier and hairier in America, but this time he was dead right. The Grand Canyon is huge, and every bit as majestic as you might have read. The light on the canyon walls changes as the day goes on, and as we walked along the South Rim from Grand Canyon village, around every corner was a view seemingly more beautiful than the last. It really is a fantastic experience to have seen it!

We took it easy along the trail out towards Yavapai from the village, partly to savour the sights and partly because it was hot, and not least because of the altitude. The South Rim is at about 7000 feet (the North Rim is even higher at 8000) and while that’s not spectacularly high, it’s enough to make you shorter of breath than you’d first expect.

Back at the El Tovar, we decided to sit on one of the swing seats on the porch for an hour or so with our books (it turns out our USA guide book recommends doing exactly that!) and we got chatting to a nice American couple who were telling us that they booked their room at the El Tovar back in December, and made their dinner reservations 3 months ago! How lucky are we?

Speaking of being lucky, although we had the first rain of the holiday on the day we visited the Grand Canyon, it just added to the experience. The few raindrops were just a welcome cooling influence, and the distant thunder was very atmospheric (no pun intended). I later heard it’s best not to be out on the Canyon walls when there’s lightning about, because the high haematite content of the rocks means that strikes are frequent. Back at the village, though, the rain meant one more pleasant surprise: a complete, double rainbow, all the way down into the Canyon.

Then we wandered down to Bright Angel Lodge to wait for our Sunset bus tour. This was well worth the $14 or so each, not maybe so much to save walking (it maybe went 4 miles or so) but for the local knowledge of the driver. She took us to The Abyss, where the canyon drops right next to the road (some passengers took the driver’s advice and scooted over to the left of the bus to avoid being freaked out) and to Hermit’s Rest before finally stopping at Mojave Point to watch the sun set over the canyon. Only there did we realise that the views we’d been seeing during the day so far had not been of the whole depth of the canyon (a mile!) because this was the first spot where you could clearly see the Colorada River, which has carved this natural wonder over the course of the last 6 billion years or so.