Sightseeing at the South Rim
Grand Canyon National Park - Sat, 12 Sep 2020, 6:30pm
After taking it easy around the lodge this morning (after arriving late last night) we finally got going to see the Grand Canyon. We spent the day driving to various places along the south rim, hopping out for short walks and picture-taking. First we explored along the less-visited Hermit's Rest road, which stretches several miles west from the lodge area and features numerous spots to hop out and go for short walks along the rim.
The Grand Canyon is deep. Here at Hermit's Rest the Colorado river lies 4,240 ft (1,290 m) below the rim of the canyon. It's not the deepest canyon on earth- the deepest is in Nepal and is, like, three times as deep as here- and this point isn't even the deepest in the Grand Canyon. The deepest point drops about 6,000 feet. But it's called Grand because the scale of it overwhelms the senses. It's 18 miles wide and over 200 miles long. In most places it's so steep you can't even see the river at the bottom. In the photo above you can glimpse it just three short stretches of it.
This is my second visit to the Grand Canyon. My first was over 20 years ago. At the time I was unimpressed!
"It's just a great, big, smoggy hole in the ground," I recall telling people. I liked Zion and Bryce, the other two national parks we visited on that trip, better.
The thing was, back then, in 1997, the Grand Canyon was smoggy. From our vantage on the North Rim we couldn't see the South Rim clearly. Here, at the South Rim today, we can see to the North Rim as well as many miles east and west along the river.
What's the difference, now vs. 1997? It could be as simple as the view looking south vs. looking north. Looking north the sun is behind us so the perception of haze is smaller. Standing on the north rim, looking south, I was looking roughly into the sun so the effect of the haze was worse. But even more than that it might be that smog is down right now... because of Coronavirus! The big cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, whose air pollution drifts up here to the Grand Canyon, are producing less pollution right now because some factories are idle and a lot fewer people are driving to work.
Either way, I'm glad it looks clearer now than it did in 1997.
Hawk and i spend the rest of the day looking down from the rim. We drove back out the Hermit's Rest road and out to the east, as well. We even went a few hundred meters down one of the trails. The thing is, sweeping vistas of the Grand Canyon quickly start to look the same. ...Let me rephrase that: pictures of the Grand Canyon all start to look the same. I had fun shooting different shots for hours but now, as I sort back through them I'm like, "Which viewpoint was this?" So I'll just share one more picture here (above), showing how we're wrapping up the day at sunset back at the lodge. Once the sun's fully down we'll head out for dinner.
It has been a day well spent.
After taking it easy around the lodge this morning (after arriving late last night) we finally got going to see the Grand Canyon. We spent the day driving to various places along the south rim, hopping out for short walks and picture-taking. First we explored along the less-visited Hermit's Rest road, which stretches several miles west from the lodge area and features numerous spots to hop out and go for short walks along the rim.
The Grand Canyon is deep. Here at Hermit's Rest the Colorado river lies 4,240 ft (1,290 m) below the rim of the canyon. It's not the deepest canyon on earth- the deepest is in Nepal and is, like, three times as deep as here- and this point isn't even the deepest in the Grand Canyon. The deepest point drops about 6,000 feet. But it's called Grand because the scale of it overwhelms the senses. It's 18 miles wide and over 200 miles long. In most places it's so steep you can't even see the river at the bottom. In the photo above you can glimpse it just three short stretches of it.
This is my second visit to the Grand Canyon. My first was over 20 years ago. At the time I was unimpressed!
"It's just a great, big, smoggy hole in the ground," I recall telling people. I liked Zion and Bryce, the other two national parks we visited on that trip, better.
The thing was, back then, in 1997, the Grand Canyon was smoggy. From our vantage on the North Rim we couldn't see the South Rim clearly. Here, at the South Rim today, we can see to the North Rim as well as many miles east and west along the river.
What's the difference, now vs. 1997? It could be as simple as the view looking south vs. looking north. Looking north the sun is behind us so the perception of haze is smaller. Standing on the north rim, looking south, I was looking roughly into the sun so the effect of the haze was worse. But even more than that it might be that smog is down right now... because of Coronavirus! The big cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas, whose air pollution drifts up here to the Grand Canyon, are producing less pollution right now because some factories are idle and a lot fewer people are driving to work.
Either way, I'm glad it looks clearer now than it did in 1997.
Hawk and i spend the rest of the day looking down from the rim. We drove back out the Hermit's Rest road and out to the east, as well. We even went a few hundred meters down one of the trails. The thing is, sweeping vistas of the Grand Canyon quickly start to look the same. ...Let me rephrase that: pictures of the Grand Canyon all start to look the same. I had fun shooting different shots for hours but now, as I sort back through them I'm like, "Which viewpoint was this?" So I'll just share one more picture here (above), showing how we're wrapping up the day at sunset back at the lodge. Once the sun's fully down we'll head out for dinner.
It has been a day well spent.