Monument Valley to Grand Canyon

With the time zone change, we got up pretty early.  Early enough, in fact, for everyone to watch a spectacular sunrise.  I'm told that we were lucky, that clouds for sunrise (or sunset, for that matter) are pretty rare.  This is actually three photos smushed into one.  The car taillights slashing through the bottom third happened the night before (someone headed home), and I used a later photograph of the mesas for a touch of light, otherwise they would be pure silhouettes.  I don't think I like my treatment, but I like it enough to post it and move on to something else.

After a warm breakfast, we loaded up and drove a short ways into Utah to snap a photo of this road leading into a mesa.

We continued on and took another photo from the other side.  Sorry for the super-saturated look, I'm playing around with a different photo editor (I kind of like it, but the skies are a bit too much for me).

From there, we moved on to Grand Canyon National Park.  The kids were suitably impressed the first time, but the novelty wore off as I made almost every stop along the way on the eastern portion of the South Rim.

The weather was cold (frigid when the wind kicked up at the edge of the rim!), but dry.  They had 4-8 inches of snow the day after we left.  I would really have liked to see Grand Canyon under some snow, but I wouldn't want to drive in it until a good bit had melted off.  That definitely wasn't going to happen anytime this vacation.

We spent two days at the Canyon, where the kids earned their Junior Ranger badges.  We did some mini-hikes along the South Rim, and enjoyed some hot coffee/chai latte/hot chocolates in the afternoons.  Overall, a good time.

Cheers,

Marc