032714 WOW, JUST WOW

We visited the Grand Canyon today.  As I walked to the Canyon wall, I was struck by how huge it is, how wide it is, by how deep it is, by how beautiful it is, and by how terrified I was.  I'm afraid of heights and the first placed we stopped was Yavapai Point.  This area has a geology museum plus some spectacular views of the Canyon.  It also has retaining walls maybe 2 feet tall and sometimes no retaining walls at all.  To say I was not comfortable, would be a gross understatement.

If we had gone to Mather Point first things may not have been as bad.  This observation area has the main ranger station and welcome center.  It also has retaining fences above waist high. While I didn't rush up to these, I was able to "creep" up to them.  In time, I got almost semi comfortable near the edges.

The canyon is immense, beautiful, and awe inspiring.  Everyone should visit them at some point.  The thing is, depending on the time of day and the amount of cloud cover, the Canyons will put on a different show each time.

I'm just going to add some pictures we took today.  And these are a small sampling of all the images we took.
 

Note the heavy jackets.  It was cold.  And tonight it's supposed to drop to the mid 20's.

The last five images were taken by Mary using the old Nikon D40 w/ 55 to 200 mm tele zoom.  The others were taken with my Nikon D5100 usually with the old 18 to 55 mm kit zoom lens. As you can tell, the time frame runs from the afternoon to sunset.  Unfortunately. a heavy cloud cover kept the sunset shots from being what I expected.

This is all for today.  Tomorrow we head for the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert at the eastern side of Arizona.  We'll be back in Virginia at some point. :)

Revised 4/20/14.  Corrections to grammar, & spelling. Slight narrative changes.