A brief moment of time travel

No Internet connection for a couple of days, so we have a little catching up to do. So, back to Monday: a long drive (350 miles) out of New Mexico, through a brief moment of geographical confusion at Four Corners, and through NE Arizona to the Grand Canyon. Most of this drive goes through the Navajo Nation & skirts the edge of the Hopi reservation that sits inside it. The landscape alternates between beautiful and horrifying, with long sections of the drive going through desert that looks like the surface of the moon. The desert section of the drive ends with a long loop along the Vermilion Cliffs, a towering line of vivid red stone.

Things change dramatically when you begin the climb into the Kaibab National Forest; soon you're driving through a pine forest with wildflowers lining the road. The road to the park entrance gives way occasionally to green grassy meadows (with a large herd of bison grazing in one of them), and it's startling to see so much green after driving through the desert all day.

Our campsite is beautiful: set in the middle of huge Ponderosa pines within sight of the Rim. It was getting late by the time we finished setting up, so we did a short (1.5 mile) hike along the Rim to the lodge.

The view from the lodge is spectacular, with a stone veranda looking out over the canyon. This is one of my favorite places on Earth. I've tried a few different ways to write about how beautiful and moving this place is, but none of them really cut it. Instead, I'll just say, "Yeah, the Grand Canyon's pretty great."

Finished the night with hot dogs & s'mores cooked over a campfire.