Western States (6)

The Grand Canyon
The canyon is a mile deep and 10 miles across. If you want to drive from one side to the other you have to travel 210 miles.

We visited the south rim but the northern rim is 1,000ft higher and 5F cooler. The bottom of the canyon is 30F warmer than the south rim. This leads to some very odd weather patterns. For example, on 1st July 1995, it snowed at the Grand Canyon. The north rim got 8ft of snow, the south rim 1ft but all the bottom got was a slight drizzle.

Mike and I on the edge.

You can get a feeling for the scale of the place by the people on the lookout

Mike looking thoughtful

Evening at the Grand Canyon

We had planned to spend the next day as the canyon and maybe get to the bottom of it but the electric windows on the hired car stopped working. A local garage tried to fix it but couldn't. The closest Avis office was in Flagstaff, about 120 miles to the south so we went there. They gave us a Buick LeSabre, a great car but not convertable. We decided we really did want a convertable - just for the pose - so went back to Las Vegas. Anotehr reason for going back was the cheap food - yum yum. On the way we stopped off at another giant hole in the ground; Meteor Crater...

Me with the Apolloa Test Capsule at the Meteor Crater visitors center

About 50,000 years ago a meterorite weighing a couple of thousand tons and moving at 40,000mph crashed into Arizona. The crater it made is nearly a mile wide and 700ft deep. Around 200 million tons of rock were thrwon up to a mile away.

I'm glad it didn't happen while we were here, Avis might have accepted one broken car, but two?

This page created 4th September 2011, last modified 4th September 2011