damn. i mean…damn.
it’s really quite difficult to explain the impression that the canyon makes. even with pictures, which everyone’s seen before, it’s hard to get your head around the scale of “that hole in the ground.”
most of the canyon is surrounded by national forest so when you drive into the park, all you see is trees. there’s a driving tour along the north rim (the south rim is closed in winter) but you can’t quite see anything from the car. so you drive around through the park and it feels like a resort. you see lodges and cabins, campgrounds and all that. then you get on to this road that follows the rim of the canyon with a dozen or so spots you can park and get out. the entire way, though, the road is maybe 50 meters off the rim so you can’t quite see anything from it. so you get out of your car and walk up the path and…. damn.
at its widest it’s more than a mile and its deepest is almost two miles to the canyon floor. it’s just huge. and colorful. and breathtaking. if you’re at all interested, you should put it on your list of things to do. we pulled in around 4:00 pm, which was too late to start a hike to camp in the backcountry, so we drove the tour and took pictures then camped in the campground. with the hot chocolate and bar service, it wasn’t quite “roughing it,” but it was fun enough. and it sure felt like we were roughing something when we woke up and realized it had snowed 6 inches on us.
we took the same driving tour again to get the shots with the snow in them. then we had to go and that was that. i will definitely go back for a longer trip, probably during warmer weather, when i can hike down into the inner gorge and see the colorado river.
anyone else want to go?
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