The Big Hole

The Grand Canyon.  What’s the big deal? So it’s a giant hole made by millions of years of erosion by the Colorado River.  But like everything legendary I’ve seen from the Las Vegas Strip to the Eiffel Tower, pictures do not do the Grand Canyon justice. It really is an amazing phenomenon.  

Riding up from our home base of Flagstaff, Arizona – home to the most beautiful and well appointed Comfort Inn either of us have ever seen – we experienced our first truly warm conditions of the trip.  Finally, we could shed our jackets to wander around the south rim of the Canyon and ooh and aah.  We were there for several hours and the sights never, ever got old.  Its size is astounding, of course, but it just seems to go on and on forever.  You think you’ve found the end and then… there’s more.

250 people a year go over the edge.  Some are rescued and some are recovered.  Some are lost for good.  A man tumbled over and died just the week before we arrived.  People misjudge the canyon all the time.  A girl posing on an edge for her boyfriend lost her footing and almost gave me a heart attack but she righted herself and stepped in a few more feet.  Don’t fight the canyon – it will always win!

It’s breathtaking and wonderful and all of those other cliches.  And it makes you feel so small and so insignificant.  But in a good way.

If you look at the above photo very closely, in the centre right you will see some people.  Or as we like to call them, “idiots”!  There’s no need to go out so far beyond the boundaries but many folks do because they can.  On the upside, if they do tumble down into the mouth of the canyon they or their families will have to pay for their rescue or recovery so there’s some justice!  One slip and you end up with a very close view of the rocks.  But their size in this photo gives you an idea of the scope of the canyon.   Even after viewing photos over the years I was unprepared for its magnificence.

On the way back we stopped at an Indian crafts market.  We saw several along the way but this one was a real going concern, settled beside an overlook.  Arizona has a lot of native reserve land and, sadly, the dwellings often show it.  Trailers that look as if they’ve been junked for decades are actual homes.  The poverty is astounding.  Then a few miles later there will be a mansion worth millions of dollars in the middle of nowhere.  We wanted to go tap on their doors and ask them, “why here?”  The nearest grocery store would be a half-hour’s drive away, if not more.   What would draw a very wealthy person to the middle of the desert to build a compound?  Perhaps they just want to be alone.

Lots of critters call the canyon home but we only saw two up close.  We viewed giant condors circling overhead, looking for something to eat, but this mega-crow was the type of bird we saw most often.

And the other was an elk.  Or A Elk if you’re a Monty Python fan.  It was completely comfortable with being watched while it ate.

There’s a reason why millions flock to The Grand Canyon every year.  We found only one problem for the bike’s pilot and that was needing to pull over every few metres to look at another spectacular view.  Grand, indeed.