Day 4 in Arizona

Wow! Today has been a monumental day of canyon viewing! Jack and Julie met us here at the lodge, and we hopped the bus toward Bright Angel trail. We saw the mules as they headed out with their passengers toward the bottom of the canyon.


You will note there are NO railings on this very narrow path... hence the sign below...

Once the mules had hit the trail, we followed down the trail to a tunnel through the rock on the trail. Here are the boys standing in front of the tunnel.

When we walked through the tunnel to the other side, we spotted a HUGE California condor sitting up on the crop of rocks above us. Awesome sight!


Hard to see here, but he is showing off his incredible 9 1/2 foot wing span here... wow!
Anyway, we headed back to the rim where Jack and Julie were waiting, and a man with the condor project told us he would be scaring the condor off. We got video and photos of him soaring through the bright blue sky... what an incredible sight!!

Then we hopped the red line bus to see the western end of the south rim. Here is a picture of all of us at one of the early stops on the tour....

My very favorite stop was Maricopa Point. It was so breath-taking (and a little scary)! It was like standing on the edge of the world! Here is our family standing there... on the edge of the world at Maricopa Point.

There was another stop called "the abyss", which had a sheer 3,000 ft drop straight down. SCARY STUFF!! We got a great view of the Colorado River at Pima Point, then we headed back to the Market Plaza and had lunch.

While we were at Maricopa Point, the boys completed their final Jr. Ranger activity. After lunch, we hopped the bus to the Canyon View Visitor Center, where they were sworn in by a national park ranger as official "Jr. Park Rangers". We bought them each a ranger hat to go with the badge, patch, and certificate they received.

Then we headed back to the lodge for much needed rest and downtime. The boys and I laughed so hard watching America's Funniest Videos and Funniest Pets and People.

When the sun started to sink low, we headed to Yavapai Point to watch the sunset. It was VERY beautiful! There was an artist standing on the rim painting the canyon as the sun set. There were three mule deer grazing right where everyone could practically touch them. The sunset was a neat experience. We decided that sunrise would be the same thing, except in reverse. So, we opted to pass on it, and we will be sleeping in tomorrow morning.

We hadn't had dinner yet, so we headed into the village and got........ you guessed it..... McDonalds. Whatever. We pick our battles! They were really good during the sunset.

At bedtime, we had a "crisis event" (at least in Nick's eyes). There was a funky bug that Adam noticed on Jason's Bible. It looked something like this:

Quite creepy, actually. I picked up the Bible to shake him off outside. That thing moved with lightning speed toward my hand and startled me. I gasped and dropped the book. Nick started freaking out - demanding that we pack and head for Vermont RIGHT NOW!!!!! LOL! It was hilarious!!! Jason/Daddy/the hero killed the bug, and all was well. He fell right asleep.