Here's the very dramatic entrance into the Canyon, but it's not great because I wasn't shooting straight down. It took my breath away.
And here's another as we go over the TURQUOISE water of the Little Colorado near its entrance to the Colorado. Had to look straight down to get it, but it's that ice blue color - cool!
We also hiked just a bit down Bright Angel Trail. Now this was a harrowing experience, because it starts out as switchbacks and is only about 3-4 feet wide at most with no guardrail! Here's a pic at the Trailhead before Dean opted out.
A lot of people were just casually strolling along, but I was hugging the mountain. Drew and Lucas wanted to go through the arch about 3 switchbacks down, but I was a'skeered, so I just took a bunch of pictures, though when I saw Drew deviate, I did go down to investigate. I realized you can see his thought process through the series of pics, down to rubbing his chin while thinking, handing Lucas the water bottle to hold, and the little smirk at the end.
I'm just glad I didn't read this book before we did that.
So I have this morbid obsession with death (maybe it started when I worked in the morgue during medical school), and I was wondering how many people die at the Grand Canyon. Would you believe they were selling this book in the gift shop everywhere we went? Of course I bought it, and the stories just curl your hair and make me so glad that nothing happened to us. Let me know if you want to borrow it sometime, but Lucas already has dibs on it next!
Here are just a few more pics I took near sunset...not OF the sunset, of course, but of Lucas snapping the sunset!
6 comments:
Very cool trip!! Amazing where the trees just stop!
Yeah, it felt like you just jumped out into space and was thrilling! I need to put Tom Petty's Free Falling as the soundtrack...
Aren't those trails amazing? I hated it when the burros would pass us. The helicopter looks like fun, much easier than a hike!
Ooh, yes, Robbie, much easier than a hike! I saw a sign on Bright Angel saying if burros came then you needed to move to the side and do what the leader said, and I can't IMAGINE passing a burro on that trail. Incidentally, in 1951, a 50-year-old employee was riding double with another employee at the top of that trail and was "crowded off the trail" by other mules. The mule fell on top of the person and killed them. (Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, Ghiglieri & Myers, page 72.) You're welcome!
Oh my! There is a similar book for Yosemite and Alaska; I've always wanted to get a copy. Happy you loved your help tour!
Ooh - other people similarly obsessed with death in popular vacation spots! One of these authors is a doctor as well as a river guide, and wrote another book about practicing medicine in the Canyon and what types of injuries there were - fascinating!
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