"It's a Grand Canyon"

View from North Rim of Grand Canyon.

It takes about 6 hours to drive from the South Rim

(which is the most visited) to the North Rim.

A river runs through it--the mighty Colorado.

South Rim view, looking to one of the scenic points.

About a week after Keith and I returned from our Yellowstone-Itasca trip, we picked up my brother Kyle, his wife Misty, their two little girls Jozlyn and Katrina, and my father at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.  We introduced them to the beauty of Arizona, and enjoyed watching their reactions to a land so different than their own.  My family quickly fell under the Sonoran Desert's charm, at first missing the green of Virginia and then later loving the wildness, openness, and diverse biota of our home.  For a grand finale, Keith and I took everyone to Grand Canyon National Park.

John Wesley Powell is credited with naming this awesome masterpiece of nature, and exploring its depths during his Colorado River expedition in 1869.  But native Americans, including the Anasazi, Havasupi, Hopi, Haulapai, and Navajo, called it home thousands of years before Spanish conquistadors first recorded its existence back in 1540.  It most definitely is "a Grand Canyon," the largest in the world at 277 miles long, a mile deep, and up to 18 miles wide.  It has been called one of the seven wonders of the world.  It is also a World Heritage Site.  This special place is, as President Theodore Roosevelt said "one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see." 

During my family's visit, a troupe of Navajo dancers delighted us.

We owe a debt of gratitude to two Presidents for protecting Grand Canyon.  President Benjamin J. Harrison was the first to use his executive authority to create the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893, after Congress foiled his previous attempts to protect this world wonder as a national park.  His early preservation efforts began in the 1880's when he was still a senator.  Still fighting to protect a place that Congress refused to support as a park, President Roosevelt signed a declaration in 1908 establishing Grand Canyon National Monument.  It was finally designated our 15th National park in 1919.

I deeply resonate with comments made by Teddy Roosevelt during his Presidential speech at the canyon.  He stipulated in our own interest and in the interest of the country that we "keep this great wonder of nature as it now is....Leave it as it is.  You cannot improve it.  The ages have been at work on it; man can only mar it."   I am so thankful for men of great foresight and love of nature like Harrison and Roosevelt.

So many people have written about the Grand Canyon.  Words just do not seem enough to describe the overwhelming beauty.  Photos simply cannot reveal the vast expanse nor changing colors.  There is a feeling of the surreal and an almost spiritual connection that seeing the canyon for the first time brings.  All I can say is that the first time I saw it, I cried.