Summary
The Grand Canyon is a well known national park. Everybody has seen pictures, but there is no picture that can describe what it feels like to be standing on the edge of a cliff that is 7,000 feet high. In fact, it’s difficult to realize the scale of the Grand Canyon until you spend some time walking the rim and observing people at distant lookouts or on trails below. I have been to the Grand Canyon before in the late 90’s. This park has been completely redesigned to handle the increased number of visitors. After spending a day there with my wife, I was impressed with what changes have been made. The park is still packed with people, but there are a lot of walkways and lookouts to accommodate the number of visitors without being too crowded.
Desert View Watchtower
We entered the park from the East entrance and the Desert View Watchtower is the first lookout after the main entrance. The parking lot for this lookout is rather large and there were a lot of visitors at this location when we arrived.
Moran Point
We only had one day to visit the South rim so we limited the number of stops that we made. There is no way to see all of the sights in one day. I estimate that it would take a good week to really explore and see it all.
Grandview Point
We saw a trail at this lookout and decided to walk down it a bit. This trail is very steep and dangerous.
Mather Point
We parked our car here and walked the eight mile rim trail to the Bright Angel trail head. The rim trail is wide and paved, but there are only a few railings in place. Most of the view is unobstructed and very dangerous if you’re not paying attention.
Bright Angel Trail
We walked about half a mile down the Bright Angel trail. We had little energy left after walking the eight mile rim trail, but we wanted to see the trail and get an idea what it looked like. Michelle spotted the tunnel through the rock and we decided to go further down the trail. Eventually, we turned back because we knew we had to climb back up. Some day, we are going to cross this trail off our bucket list.
We rode the bus back to the main parking lot. The buses go further up, but we were wiped out by the time we hiked back up the Bright Angel trail.
