Monument Valley & The Grand Canyon

We had a long drive to the Grand Canyon today, via Monument Valley that you might recognise from various ‘road trip’ movies. An ancient landscape of towering sandstone monuments and deep crevasses, awe-inspiring but also included miles of seeming desolate nothingness.   It forms part of the Arapahoe Reservation.

Describing the Grand Canyon is hard to do adequately. It is not only the scale that is breath-taking, at over a mile deep, but it is the bands of different coloured geology that run along the canyon walls, distinct hues of green, red, orange, and whites, that make this truly beautiful to behold.   Each striation containing the secrets of a distant time; as Ollie discovered when he managed to find a couple of ammonites on our trek.

On more practical matters we left the RV in the car park this time and booked into the Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge, accommodation made up of real Ponderosa Pine log cabins which was a real rustic treat (nice soft beds and full en-suite of course!).   So comfortable that Ben was the only one who could rouse himself early enough to see the sunrise!

We chose the North Rim over the South as it’s a lot less touristy and thus a quieter spot to trek and basically just stare at the Canyon. At 6,000ft it is also higher than the South Rim and we’d heard more impressive in it’s views, but I don’t think the photos do it justice.  Next stop is another national park, Zion in Utah, so more impressive views to come.