Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park



Morning Sunrise and Snow from our balcony at El Tovar

We woke up this morning to snow. Haven't seen serious quantities of that stuff for a while, and though our jaunt to the Southwest was to avoid the frigid Philly weather, we knew at the Grand Canyon we were pushing our luck.  Well, it did allow for some more interesting photographs than the previous' days rains did. 

As some of you may know, the Canyon is a mile deep, and it is actually about 40 degrees warmer at river level that at the rim where we are, you can see that in the photos below, the snow is only on the upper levels.  The snow came and went all day, but in between, there were snippets of sun, or something like that, which made for better viewing.

A view from the south rim of Grand Canyon of Bright Angel Creek, framed by snowy trees.

We spent some time at the Yavapai Point Geology Museum in the morning.  The numbers, years, scale of this geology always leaves us feel humble.  Of the 5 billion years geologists have been tracking, the Grand Canyon is a newcomer on the block; it started a paltry 6 million years ago.  Mankind, of course, is just a blink of an eye at the recent end of that scale.

We also learned more about some of the pioneers who settled and developed what is now the National Park.  The Kolb brothers - just looking at old photographs of them standing places not meant to hold a person - not to even think about OSHA standards - made us a little weak in the knees.  We also saw a very famous silent film they made in 1915 about going down the Colorado River, that made us realize what guts and bravado these fellows had (and one of them lived to 95!).



Yawn, another shot of the Grand Canyon.  Snow is bad weather for everybody but photographers and skiers.