Grand Canyon

I have two confessions that usually shock the European members of the circles I run in. First, I've never been to New York City. To many Europeans with a traveling bug, NYC is the U.S., and it is the greatest city in the world. After I explain that the distance between Phoenix and NYC (2138 miles) is approximately the same as the distance between Amsterdam and Baghdad (2347 miles), and that my travel budget was fairly constrained before I moved to Europe, their incredulity (mostly) fades.

The second confession is a bit less forgivable - despite having lived in Arizona for 22 years, and in New Mexico for seven, I've never visited the Grand Canyon. It's a pretty embarrassing blight on my traveling resume. So I decided to remedy it when visiting friends and family during a quick trip to the U.S. in the first week of May.

I hadn't prioritized visiting the canyon in the past for a few reasons, the strongest being an assumption that the desert/high desert landscape wouldn't be that much more spectacular than what I'd seen in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Salt River Canyon, Sedona, etc. Boy, was that a stupid assumption. The trail along the South Rim was hands down the most spectacular natural scene I'd ever seen. It was better than mountain summits in the Alps, Coastal Mountains in British Columbia, Canadian Rockies in Albert, and San Juan mountains in Colorado. It was, truly, breathtaking.

The warm sun and blue skies seem far in the past after two weeks of heavy (daily) rain and wind chills that have dipped below 40 degree. Summer in Amsterdam will not happen in May, but hopes are high for a pleasant June.

Warning sign in five language (or six, depending on how many non-Latin language characters languages are being used at the bottom). Good decision - there were a lot of Germans on the trail, and many Asian tourists. 

The high desert trees dotting the edges of the trail offered some eye candy. And something to grasp onto if you got too close to the edge.

A five foot snake slowly made its way onto the trail from under a pile of logs. I wasn't sure if it was a rattlesnake (it wasn't) until its tail appeared, and by then it had seen us and decided to slink back under shelter before I could get much closer. 

Emily in a dancer pose on top of a memorial for John Wesley Powell.

Me modeling a shirt I purchased in Thailand, which was described by Emily as "heavy on the taupe." I'm glad she provided this description - I had previously had no idea what taupe looks like.