Alright, now I have something to read again and not only a slideshow. Those are also only one and a half days that I’m describing here, but we just experience so much in such a short time. As I needed another oil change yet we settled that one out in Flagstaff before we traveled on to the Grand Canyon. You couldn’t leave that one out when you’re so close by. We expected to have a big crowd of tourists being there but it happened to be half as bad. Of course, there were plenty of other people, but it was not overcrowded.
What are a couple more tourists compared to this huge canyon?
After our arrival at the campground, we immediately drove to the rim of the canyon. Altogether, it is a normal canyon like there are a lot in the USA, it’s just that it’s not any canyon but the Grand Canyon. The biggest canyon in the world. So deep, that the Colorado River was only visible in a few places.
Standing there with this view was about a thousand times more impressive than it appears in this picture.
With the bus shuttle, we, later on, moved to another he viewpoint where we watched the sunset, which let the canyon walls appear very plastic.
With the sun setting also the smog from the big cities in California moved into the canyon. But still, the light on the canyon walls was impressive.
After a comfortably cool night, we then split up on the next morning. Caro and I wanted to hike down a little bit into the canyon.
We definitely didn’t look that fresh after our hike anymore.
Let’s see how far we would go, after all, we had to get out again, too. When we arrived at the 1,5 Mile-House after only a bit more than 30 minutes, we then moved on and hiked to the 3 Mile-House. Altogether it took us about 1,5 hours, but with the way up we spent over three hours on that hike. With that, we didn’t even hike down half of the whole canyon. Despite that, we still realized pretty good from down there how huge this canyon was, that the Colorado River once carved into the desert.
There was still a large elevation to the bottom of the canyon, but we had already covered a fair distance.
After our hike, we still used the campground showers and then had a lunch at the Grandview Point. In addition to that, we stopped at the Lipan Point that offered a good view of the Colorado River in the Canyon.
One last view of the Colorado River, then we moved on.
Then we moved on to the Lake Powell. The route went through the forbidding terrains of the Indian Reservations, that really let you behind with mixed feelings. With this land really nobody could do something. Everything was dry like dust and the Colorado River was hidden in a gorge of several hundreds of meters. Only at the Lake Powell, the water was accessible again. First, we drove over the bridge, from where we could see the great Glen Canyon Dam.
Water in the desert. The construction of the dam resulted in the huge Lake Powell.
Then we drove on to the campground, met my parents again and finally got to the shore to go swimming. At last, I had another opportunity to make use of my dinghy.
Ship Ahoy! The Pirates of Lake Powell were on the water again.
It was pretty exhausting with the wind, but even my parents had to have a go on it.
Fun for the whole family. The purchase of the dinghy now really has paid off.
Refreshed we got back to the campground where we once more had a great barbecue. Sitting at the campfire we let the day slowly fade away.
