South Rim, Grand Canyon

May 25, 2011

This is the subdued lighting just after sunrise on the canyon walls above the Kaibab Trail head. The recorded time is 5:23 am, just 7 minutes after the formal sunrise time of 5:16 am.

This shows the change in appearance in 18 minutes at 5:41am as the sun rose enough to illuminate various features in the Grand Canyon.

This is a view of the wall to our right, compared to the views to the left or westward in the above views. This view includes the Kaibab Trail in about the middle of the band of trees at the bottom of this top wall. The time is 5:39, or 23 minutes after sunrise. The sun can be seen to be illuminating the tops of some of the features.

We headed out for the Grand Canyon to catch the sunrise. Jeff and Rod are playing around with the tripod and self timer to put them in the picture. It was 27 degrees when we got the rim, so we were glad we had taken jackets. Quite a contrast to the nearly 90 that we experienced the day before.

We had decided to make this our early run to the Canyon for the sunrise, we got up at 3am in Williams and were on the rim of the Grand Canyon just before 5am. We had hoped to drive to Yaki Point where we took the sunrise pictures in 1982, but now that road is accessible only by shuttle. Jeff and I walked in to the Kaibab Trail Head, which was closer.

We had left the rest of the family with the car when Jeff and I had made the dash for the Kaibab Trailhead, so now we had to get back together. We could see a pullout on the road that was right on the canyon, so it was a lot nicer to walk there on the canyon rim than to go back by the road. We got lots of nice views of the canyon.

The rush of the process of getting here was now over and we could just enjoy the early morning walking along the rim of the Grand Canyon. It was still just 5:50 am and the temperature was probably still below freezing, but now that we were walking, it was exhiliratiing.

It was good to have the opportunity to just walk along the rim of the Canyon with Jeff in this beautiful early morning. There are not that many times you get an opportunity to do this kind of thing and I was praising the Lord for this time of beauty and serenity.

This was one of the most wide-open views of the Canyon that we got from this rim trail.

From this point on the edge, I think Jeff was looking down on part of the Kaibab Trail, which we were going to be hiking on later.

I certainly never tired of the beauty of the combination of the evergreen trees and the Canyon vista.

One last view of this part of the Grand Canyon near the Kaibab Trailhead. We had reached the main road from the rim trail.

We made contact with the ladies in the car on the road and we were all ready for breakfast! We drove around to the Yavapai Lodge where they have a nice cafeteria and all sat down together for breakfast. It was still early - we had come off the rim trail just after 6am, so we had seen a lot since we got up at 3am.