The Grand Canyon (and other landforms of Arizona)

In April, 2009, I visited much of central and western Arizona, from Tucson to Flagstaff and Yuma to Bullhead City, as a part of Scott's and my annual trip to the 2009 NAB convention in Las Vegas. This year, I decided to leave Scott at the convention—which he reports was surprisingly well-attended, given the economy, down only about 20% from 2008—and head back to our starting point, Phoenix, by way of the Grand Canyon, which I had always wanted to see.

The Grand Canyon is what you might call a photogenic geological feature. I took about 500 photos, most of which are not really subject to extended explanations of the sort that I normally write in these essays. So I have gathered all of my photos of the canyon, along with other photos of Arizona geology and landforms, into this separate gallery. Photos from the canyon but which are primarily of plants or animals are in a separate Arizona Wildlife gallery.

I entered Grand Canyon National Park on Monday, April 20, via the south entrance, and left on Tuesday, April 21, via the east entrance. (By the way, I can highly recommend visiting the park in the third week of April: most of the spring-breakers are gone, but it's not yet peak vacation season, nor is it as hot as it would be in summer. The weather, although cooled by the high altitude, was quite comfortable for T-shirt and shorts, and there were none of the afternoon thunderstorms that characterize the summer monsoon season.) I walked from Yavapai Observation Station west along the Rim Trail, first with a ranger-guided tour, and then later on my own all the way to the El Tovar Hotel. I then took one of the park shuttle buses out to Powell Point—named after river explorer and USGS founder John Wesley Powell—to photograph the sunset, avoiding the more popular Hopi Point. Tuesday, on the way out of the park, I stopped at several of the vista points along Desert View Drive. After leaving the park, I followed Route 64 along the Little Colorado River to Cameron, and turned south on US 89 back to Flagstaff, passing Wupatiki and Sunset Crater National Monuments to the east and the San Francisco Peaks to the west. (The San Francisco Peaks include Mount Humphreys, the highest peak in Arizona.)

I passed through Flagstaff and followed Route 89A (formerly US 89A) through Sedona, Cottonwood, Jerome, and Prescott Valley before winding up in Prescott as the sun was setting. The canyons heading into and out of Sedona are also quite striking, although I took few photos there.

The south rim of the Grand Canyon is at an elevation of about 7,000 feet above sea level—a significant change from the 2,000-foot elevation of the Colorado River at the base of the canyon. Even in Flagstaff, at a paltry 5,800 feet, I was feeling the effects.

The jade-green stuff seen at the bottom of the canyon is the Colorado River, no longer red since the damming of Glen Canyon, 150 miles upriver. The east-rim overlooks have more of a river view than the heavily-touristed central section.