Grand 4

Thursday was our last full day at the park so we fit in all the miscellaneous places we wanted to visit.

Found this cool cemetery on the walk from the campgrounds to the shuttle. The earliest grave I found was from someone born in 1799 !!

One of the highlights of the day was walking the Trail of Time. Each large step signifies 100 million years of history or something and is designated by a little plate in the ground and along the way they've included chunks of rock from each era/layer of the canyon. One had some cool trilobites fossils.

Walking 'off-road' along the rim was a must-do whenever we could.

Ran into this little guy along the way and I caught this shot of her looking right at me!

I never got tired of looking at rocks.

Emily looks dead

Hiking AND learning!

All in all, we walked from Yavapai Point to Hermit's Rest during our four days. Your perspective is always distorted because I feel you can't fully understand how big the area is. 

Here's a zoom out of the 3D map of the canyon. 

The Geology Museum was really cool! It was originally built because it had some of the best views of the Canyon and was used as a scientific research station back in the day. We learned about the formation of the Canyon starting from an era where North America was down by the Equator. Then we walked over to the Grand Canyon Visitor Center and picked up Junior Ranger Booklets, which were super fun to fill out. We also watched a really majestic short film called Journey to Wonder where we saw clips from the earliest explorers to sail down the Colorado. Their wooden boats would bump back and forth against all the rocks, I can't believe anyone survived it!

This squirrel was contemplating it's life on that edge for a while. 

The Park Rangers said that Hopi Point was the best spot to watch a sunset over the canyon so there we headed.  One activity in the junior ranger book was to sit in silence at the canyon for ten minutes and write your thoughts. We asked Ranger Eric some questions about the river and got him to sign our ranger books. 

Straight up chilling

Maggie was excited to become a junior ranger! ...Grace not quite so much. 

There's the Colorado River way down there.