Grand Canyon National Park

In 2015, my daughter was living in Flagstaff, Arizona and we went there to celebrate Christmas with her. Flagstaff is a beautiful town surrounded by the San Francisco mountain range, and while we were there, we experienced more snow than they had in the Port Huron area of Michigan where we live. Of course the city itself is at about 7,000 feet elevation.

During our visit, our daughter took us to a restaurant called Josephine’s in Flagstaff, where for Christmas Eve they had a buffet dinner with no menu service, but five years later we are still talking about that meal. It was easily one of my 10 best meals ever while traveling, or really just ever in general. They had salmon, ham, other meats, about ten difference salads and sides and three or four deserts, including chocolate mousse, that I ate verrryyy slowly to enjoy it as long as possible. I’m not a huge fan of ham, but the ham they had at this buffet was to die for, and I kept going back for more.

Anyway, during this visit we visited the Grand Canyon. We have been to several national parks in our travels, and this one did not disappoint.

The park encompasses 277 miles of the Colorado River and adjacent land. It is a mile deep and up to 18 miles wide. The rock at the bottom of the canyon is about two billion years old, and the park is located on what is known as the Colorado Plateau, that was raised up when the North American plate overrode the Pacific Plate as the Rocky Mountains were formed.

About two million years ago, the Colorado River started flowing across the Colorado Plateau, and began carving out the softer rock leaving the harder rock standing, creating the ridges and structures that you see today. The colors are stunning and beautiful.

There is a stone structure at the South Rim location called the “Watchtower” which was built to mimic an Anasazi structure and inside the tower at the top you can get a wonderful panoramic view of this part of the park. As is stated in the National Park Service brochure “Upstairs the Hopi Room presents paintings by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, who took the room's theme from the Hopi Snake Dance.”

I was impressed by the visitor’s center that had a large gallery of paintings by various local artists of spots in the park. Some of which were spectacular. We were only able to visit the South Rim at the time as the North Rim was closed due to winter conditions, as the North Rim is a bit over a thousand feet higher than the South Rim and there was still snow cover on those roads to the north.

If you are ever in that area of Arizona, I highly recommend a visit to this beautiful park.

For more of my Grand Canyon images and Arizona in general, please visit my gallery here:

https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/visions+of+arizona


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