I am writing this blog on July 4 in the afternoon. We left home June 28 at 4:30AM and returned July 4 at 2:30AM. It was a great trip with our friends Jim and Rosemary Kestle. Donna and I took more than 700 pictures which we will gladly show to anyone willing to watch them. We also have a number of videos to watch, including a herd of Elk grazing along side the road, the float trip on the Colorado River, and the helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon.
To paraphrase John Wesley Powell, an early explorer and writer about the Grand Canyon, words cannot express and pictures cannot portray the beauty and grandeur of the Grand Canyon - it is something that has to be seen; nonetheless, we offer the following pictures to share special highlights of the visit.
First, the proof we were there and didn’t buy all these pictures, which would have cost a lot less money by the way - but not been nearly the fun!

Next, the canyon just before sundown on the first day of the visit. The picture was taken from Grandview Point (the name says it all), which is near the east end of the National Park.

We liked Grandview Point so much, we returned at sunrise (5AM) on day two.

Our next great adventure was a float trip down the Colorado River from the base of the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona. This was not in the Grand Canyon but the Glen Canyon has its own grandeur. The air temperature at the bottom of the canyon was 103F where we stopped for lunch, with hardly a cloud in the sky. The water was 47F, which was refreshing for a short time when wading but painful quickly thereafter.

We have shared pictures from ground level and on the river - now we have the canyon from the air in a helicopter! Most of the flight was at 7,500 feet elevation, which is about 1,000 feet above the elevation of the canyon rim. The following picture is of the east end of the canyon where the river enters the National Park area.

The final two days of the trip were spent visiting Sedona, AZ, which is famous for the red rocks and the beauty of the desert. The rock formations are right in your face not at great distance. This picture was taken from a neighborhood street right at the base of the formation.

The trip was to see the Grand Canyon but it turned out to be so much more. About 50 miles south of the Grand Canyon South Rim is the town of Williams. Bob Robertson had spoken highly of it so we stopped there going and coming back. The bus trip to Page to take the float trip took us through the Navajo Indian Reservation, which was empty desert. The bus stopped at a neat trading post in the middle of no where - lots of native crafts. Sedona has great restaurants (unlike the Grand Canyon area) and places to shop, as well as the beautiful sights to see. On the way to Phoenix to come home, we visited the town of Jerome - a booming copper mining town in the 1950’s that became a ghost town until hippies and artists moved in. It is now the home of artists and was a neat place to visit. Finally, Phoenix lived up to its reputation - the outside temperature reading on the car computer read 112F when we returned to the airport to come home.
This was a great trip - we’d love to show and tell you more about it!