Grand Canyon

We had quite the little adventure this weekend. We went to Grand Canyon National Park! So, apparently there is no "the" in from of Grand Canyon, but that just sounds so weird to me. Can't teach this old dog new tricks, I guess. ANYWAY, back to the adventure. We've been talking about heading to the North Rim for a while now, but it's just never worked out. The original plan was to go last fall, but seeing as I was puking my brains out through the first snow, it never happened. And then in the spring we had a baby, and it's just never worked out. We realized that this past Saturday would pretty much be our only chance, what with the upcoming move (we close tomorrow, and move all the big stuff a week from Friday) and general conference, and winter approaching. So Clark made the sacrifice of missing the BYU game, and we went to Arizona for the day.

The North Rim is about 3 hours from St George, so we left at 7:30am, and got home at 9:00pm. A long day. But it was so worth it. So, you start out driving in your typical Southern Utah landscape - red rocks, desert-like, no trees. You know the scene. And it continues this way through the Indian Reservation (guess what they have on the reservation? A gas station! Guess what they don't have on the reservation? TAX!!), through Fredonia. And then, suddenly you are driving through trees, lots and lots of trees. And meadows. The weather is much cooler. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn we were in Yellowstone, all these tall skinny pines all around. This continues on through Jacob Lake, and on into the park boundaries. You drive all the way into the park, to the visitor's center, and you still just see trees all around. So we parked the car, got out, took a look around, and it still didn't feel like we were in Arizona, let alone at the Grand Canyon. So we walked over to Grand Canyon Lodge. At this point, we felt like asking someone, "Excuse me, where is the Grand Canyon?" And then, as you enter the lodge and walk down a few stairs, you are hit with an incredible view out the window. It's just right there! The whole day, we'd be driving or hiking through the trees, thinking, "The Grand Canyon is right over there. . ." It just felt like we were in the mountains, in a forest somewhere. Incredible!

Since we only had a few hours, we decided to do a few short "hikes" (they are really more like walks, but they offer killer views), and then one medium sized hike (about 2 hours round trip). We started off at Bright Angel Point, since that is right next to the Visitor's Center. Then we headed out to Point Imperial, and then down to Roosevelt Point, Cape Final (this was the longer hike), and Cape Royal. Cape Royal had the best views, in my opinion. You start out looking over the canyon, and you see Angels Window (a hole in the rock). And then you hike out on top of the window, which is just amazing. And I'm really glad we went on the Cape Final hike, it was so beautiful. There were a number of side trails to a view of the canyon all along the way. It was so incredible. I know that is the adjective of the hour, but that's what it was: incredible.

Julia was a good little trooper the whole time. There was a lot of driving, and a lot of in and out of the carseat, but she really didn't complain. In fact, she was talking up a storm and singing songs while we were hiking. I'll have to post video of that later. Very cute. Oh, and here is a milestone: Julia got her first sunburn. Crappy milestone, if you ask me. It turns out she needs a bigger hat, one that shades her cheeks and nose. Oops. But it wasn't too bad, and in fact I was trying to get a picture of it on Sunday afternoon, but I couldn't get it to show up on camera. So I'm not a terrible mother, just a sort of crummy one. But she didn't complain about it at all, and she was such a good girl all day.

And here's the best part: we actually took pictures!!! I was so proud of myself for remembering to pull the camera out. In fact, we got like 65 pictures of our little excursion, so we did pretty well. Don't worry, they aren't all in the slide show. After a while, all the pictures of the canyon start to look the same. My apologies in advance if you get bored. But there are some people shots, so at least for that!