Grand Canyon South Rim

We woke up with a jump as someone tried to get into our room, turns out it was the cleaner and it was 11.58am!! I'm still in shock we slept so long but after a lot of driving I guess we needed it. Our two days at the Grand Canyon rapidly shrunk to a day and a half by the time we made it to the park and found a parking space.

Visiting the Grand Canyon is a weird one, you hear about it all your life and you know it's going to be spectacular but you have also seen hundreds of photos so it's not a surprise like some views are when you get up to the view point. It really is absolutely stunning as you would imagine and it's ridiculously huge, especially if you look down to the river for some context.

We walked along the tourist rim trail, it's extremely busy with tourists but some how you can still get a fair amount of photos that look empty. The walk is lovely but the Grand Canyon is so vast that the view doesn't change so once you've got the first few snaps you're sort of done. The real benefit of walking along the rim being that the further you walk the less tourists there are!

We popped into the geological museum to learn a little how it was formed. The cool part of the canyon is that you can see so many layers of rocks and that it goes so deep. It's 227 river miles long, 18 miles wide in places and a mile deep. 

It was formed from layers of volcanic magma, then years and years of sedimentary rock layers forming whilst it was covered by the sea. After that the tectonic plate movement pushed the rocks up and uniquely they stayed level rather than buckling into mountains. The river then slowly started wearing the rocks away. 

The river pulled sediment along that slowly chipped away at the soft rock. Any hard rock that wasn't worn away by the river crumbled into the valley under its own weight and instability once the soft rock had already been swept away. Apparently the Colorado river at the bottom was strong enough to drag a car size hard rock boulder along the bottom, imagine how much that can knock off on its path.

After walking for a few hours we caught the bus as far west as the tourists can easily go and sat to watch the sun set. It was absolutely beautiful on the beautifully clear day as the sun went down and the rocks shone red. The only problem was then getting back. It gets cold quick, we were well prepared (well done Edd for thinking ahead) but it was still a bit of a long slog back with two busses to catch and a lot of tourists in each queue.

We made it back to our car long after it had gone dark and stopped off for a McDonalds on the way home, apparently Edd reckons it doesn't count as fast food here, more 'local cuisine'!! Anyway it was cheap and got the job done. We need to be up before dawn tomorrow as its a good half hour drive to the park and another half hour in the park to the spot we want to catch sunrise at so nothing wild tonight, we're already winding down and it's only 8.30pm!