Day 5 - Grand Canyon

Click here for my Picasa album of our Grand Canyon visit.

Day five of the tour started with another breakfast at the Airport Mesa cafe and a small stop-and-hike up the airport vortex before striking out on the road to the Grand Canyon. In case I hadn't mentioned in previous posts, Sedona is known for it's vortices, areas of supposed-mystical power where geomagnetic forces do odd things to nature and people. Indeed Tony pointed out several twisted trees, growing in bent-over angles that defied a natural growth pattern, such as straight up or toward the path of the Sun. Twice, while in Sedona, we heard-tale of a researcher from the east who came out to completely disprove this myth of these vortices but by the time he was done taking measurements and talking to the locals he was thoroughly convinced of their validity. Whether or not you believe in their effects or powers, however, the view from the airport vortex was stunning. I can certainly see why people thought they were being re-energized or imbued with spiritual well-being, here and that goes for Sedona as a whole.

"Team UFO" at the Grand Canyon. From the left; Glenn, Ellen, Linda, me, Van, Bonnie, and Terry. (Courtesy TST)

After that it was on the road, again, and blazing across the desert. I think Tony had underestimated how long it would take us to get to the Canyon because we flew like a bat-out-of-hell along those desert roads. Not that I'm complaining, it was a smooth ride and not too much to see except for more desert (which I still found to be beautiful, really.)

When we got to the Grand Canyon we saw....stuff. I'd already seen some of the Canyon as we approached but, of course, the small hike to the South Rim revealed the Canyon in all it's glory and I was awe-inspired which was to be expected. We visited a watch tower that stood perched on the rim of the Canyon, built by an anthropologist several decades back. There were people everywhere taking pictures or acting like idiots by perching on guard rails so their friends could take pictures, as if they were about to fall off. It was here Tony told us a story about a UFO link with the Canyon. It seems that the local American Indians had a legend of a saucer-shaped craft that was buzzing the Canyon and actually crashed down in the base several hundred years ago. The local tribe buried the craft and alien bodies out of respect and, if memory-serves, there were some petroglyphs at the base of the Canyon at the crash site, depicting what had occurred. Unfortunately we didn't have the time, equipment, nor skill set to clammer down the Canyon walls and investigate for ourselves, but it was still an interesting story.

Van and I at the Canyon rim with my first solid view of the Grand Canyon. (Courtesy TST)

The rest of the day was spent around the Canyon rim, visiting some of the lookout points and hiking along the top. Despite Tony's aggressive driving we ran out of time too fast for my book, and we didn't have the chance to do as much nature seeing as I would have liked. We did hike enough for Van to realize how out of shape he was, though, poor guy, but his Army training still got him pretty far along the rim. Near the end of the day we went to another lookout point to try to catch a sunset, but the sky had over-cast right along the western horizon, obscuring our view. Regardless the Canyon was still beautiful, majestic, and awesome to behold.

Dinner followed, then we headed to our resort where Tony had already setup our rooms for us. The resort was one of the nicer places we'd stayed but also one of the shorter stays. By 7:15 am the next day we were up and on the road toward our next destination.

Click here for my Picasa album of our Grand Canyon visit.