A Few Days at the Grand Canyon

First of a few days at the canyon. The road north climbed through a smaller red-rock canyon first, walls going from rust to white with pine wedged into every ledge, and then the land flattened into ponderosa and stayed that way until the rim just appeared.

We left the car in Grand Canyon Village — the free shuttle runs that whole stretch, so parking once was enough — and took the Rim Trail west from Pipe Creek toward Hermit's Rest. The rim sits around 7,000 feet, which the first uphill stretch made clear.

What I keep coming back to: a pair of white limestone blocks balanced right at the edge a little off the trail, one capstone sitting crooked on top like somebody set it down and left. And below, a pale trail threading across the flat platform toward the inner gorge — you could follow it with your eye for a mile before it dropped out of sight. The Colorado showed itself once, a green-brown sliver way down, then the walls took it back.

The South Rim never closes, so there's no reason to rush any of this. Tomorrow we'll head toward Desert View.