THE GRAND CANYON

Good Night from THE GRAND CANYON!!! Stay Tuned.............

People sit with their feet dangling waiting for the sunset.

When the sun is setting you can see the different color and shadow changes.

People just stand around in amazement of the grandeur of it all.

When we got to the Watchtower, it was getting pretty late and they were about to close the tower so we didn't make it to the top to take a view of the Canyon. Chucks!!!

The Watchtower was built to get widest possible view of the Grand Canyon. With a lavish highly publicized dedication ceremony it was opened in May of 1933.

I wouldn't even want to see one, much less harm one. Just stay out of my path and sight.

There were some ruins in this area but I already had some many pictures to upload. I took over 700 pictures this day and its hard to decide which ones to upload.

One-and-one-half kilometers below the South Rim, the Colorado River flows at an average speed of four miles per hour. Averaging 300 feet wide and 100 feet deep, the river flows west through the Canyon, bends south and empties into the Gulf of California in Mexico.

I thought I was on top of the world. What people do for a picture!!! Things I never did do when I was younger. I'm glad it didn't fall over, I don't think I would have recovered???

The South Rim and North Rim of the park are just 10 miles apart as a raven flies, but 215 miles by road. South Rim elevation is 7,000 feet with temperatures in the 50s to 80s F in summer and the 20s to 50s F in winter. The North Rim, 1,000 ft. higher, is about 10 degrees cooler than the South Rim. We didn't go the 215 miles around but we did go quite a ways.

I didn't get who this Ranger was but I bet he had an important part in this situation. He was the guy that introduced Senator McCain.

They were having some kind of conference about the Canyon. Senator Mark Udall from Colorado in the green shirt and Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar were also there. Boy, we really got a treat, didn't we?

Imagine us shaking hands with who could have been our President of the United States. Well, we did and it sure was a treat. We couldn't have made the Grand Canyon at a better time. Well I guess if we could of been there a week earlier we could have shook hands with the President of the United States. Nevertheless we were satisfied. Senator McCain shook hands with us and he seems like a down to earth kind of guy.

When we got to this part of the Canyon, we noticed that there were two different places where there were microphones, cameras, chairs with paper names on them and other things. We knew something was going on, so we walk along and saw these figures in the white shirts and dark jackets and they sure did look like John McCain and George Stephanopoulos. We got pretty excited at that time.

So many different rock formations.

There were a few of these flying around. He wasn't that close, I just zoomed him in. These are the California Condors which inhibits the western coast of the United States. Although they are primarily scavengers, feeding on carrion, these species belong to the New World vulture family Cathartidal, related to storks and not closely related to Old World vultures, which are in the family Accipitridoe along with hawks, eagles and kites. These are highly endangered birds with a 9-foot wingspan. Not very pretty.

The Grand Canyon reveals a beautiful sequence of rock layers that serve as windows into time. The carving of the canyon is only the most recent chapter, a geologic blink of an eye, in a long story. That long story includes rock nearly 2 billion (2,000,000,000) years old in the bottom of the canyon, land masses colliding and drifting apart, mountains forming and eroding away, sea levels rising and falling, and relentless forces of moving water. Several factors make Grand Canyon's geology remarkable. Many canyons form as rivers cascade among mountain peaks, but Grand Canyon sits incised into an elevated plateau. The desert landscape exposes the geology to view. The strata revealed preserve a lengthy, although incomplete, record of Earth's history.

Five different Indian tribes presently occupy the region - Hopi, Navajo, Havasupai, Pauite and Hualapai.

The Grand Canyon is home to 70 species of mammals, 250 species of birds, 25 species of reptiles and five species of amphibians. Vegetation in the Canyon includes numerous varieties of wildflowers.

The 277-mile long, one-mile deep canyon covers a total of 1,900 square miles. It was discovered in 1540 by Spanish explorer Don Lopez de Cardenas, a captain in Coronado's expedition.

The Grand Canyon Forest Reserve was established on February 20, 1893. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Canyon a national monument under the Antiquities Act. Congress declared the Canyon a national park in 1919, three years after the National Park Service was formed. The red shale, fossil-algae-bearing limestone, and dark lava of the Grand Canyon Supergroup are revealed in only of few areas.

Pretty amazing stuff. The Grand Canyon is one of the seven natural wonders of the world, along with Mount Everest in Nepal, Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Lights, Paricutin Volcano in Mexico and Harbor of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. ENJOY!!!!!

Ready to take your money.

Here are the prices for the entrance to the National Park. When we get older, we can buy a lifetime senior pass and can get in free after your initial fee.

We're headed to the Grand Canyon. We had been there before but when we came through coming from Las Vegas, it got late on us and we didn't get to see too much so I really wanted to go again and see the whole thing from every angle.