Saturday, June 5, 2010

Grand Canyon (from land and sky)

On Friday (5/28/10), we went to the Grand Canyon. It’s definitely amazing. I’ve seen it before and felt again it was unlike anything I’ve seen. God is awesome. His creation is awesome and He definitely outdid himself with this piece of work.

We hiked the upper rim trail Friday. It was a little over 3 miles and the weather was fantastic. Only downsides: I got a blister and Brad’s sprained ankle was causing him some discomfort. Plus side: no one fell into the big hole to their death.


Brad had scheduled for us to take a helicopter ride over the canyon on Saturday, but the winds on Friday were very high. Well over 25 miles per hour....and over that the helicopters don’t fly. We didn’t see a single one in the sky on Friday. We arrived Saturday at the Grand Canyon National Park Airport and were pleasantly surprised to see that we’d get to take our flight. There was zero wind!

All I can say is that it was freaking amazing. I was terrified at first but once we started going I felt more and more comfortable. Of course when we left the safety of the southern rim (a mere 100 feet or so down) to the emptiness of the canyon (a mere 5,000 feet down) I got a bit nervous again. However, I had goosebumps nearly the whole time.

Here is David before our ride in front of a helicopter:

This is a view from the helicopter looking towards Flagstaff. This mountain we could see for at least an hour as we drove into Flagstaff, then we could still see it from the Grand Canyon. So cool! We heard this is a place to ski....and you can still see lots of snow at the top.

Here are a couple of pictures taken from directly above the canyon. We had some great views of the Colorado River (and the Little Colorado River).


This was definitely a highlight (if not THE highlight) of our trip!

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