Grand Canyon

 I'm breaking down the GC portion into multiple entries as of course it's photo intensive :)   

Last installment, we had left the east watchtower and headed to GC village.  It was quite a bit further than I anticipated (close to an hour).  We got there and in my confusion of stressing (for no reason) and the very general email they sent out, I had JT drop me at the wrong lobby.   I realized it as I was on deck for the receptionist.  They were quite pleasant an pulled  up my reservation (all the hotels are run by one group).  She redirected me and in doing so, I had to walk past the daily train that runs up from Williams, AZ  

Observation car.

Back of the train, about 9 cars or so.  2nd caris a vista dome caar

1950s era F series diesel.  Saw a lot of these when I was a little kid.  This was off on a siding, not sure if it's useable or not.

Modern motive power to pull the tourists.   The cars I would guess are from late 40s to 50s with the aluminum sides.  There is one train a day for passengers.  The next morning we heard another around sunrise. We are guessing they bring a frieght and have another siding away from the tourists to bring food and other consumeables (proably a couple times per week).   This is the only national park with a K-12 school in the park (up to 5K park employees live in the park).

After checking into the room, we took the 200 yard walk up to the rim.  Pretty much right at the top of the Bright Angel Trail. 180 panorama shot.   25 years ago Lucy and I took the one day mule ride down into the canyon.   Would have liked an overnight but it wasn't available, so we jumped on the only available one.. Later I will point our how far we got down to Plateau Point.

Late afternoon sun throwing cool shadows.   I was excited to spend the nnight so I could watch the sun go down.

We decided to beat the dinner rush and ate a little early, then headed back to the room and grabbed some warmer clothes and headed toward Mather Point and the Visitor Center as after sunset there was an astronomy program.  Here we are at the Visitor Center Parking lot.  Yep we missed it by a few minutes due to anelk traffic jam.

Dying light looking west from Mather Point. Pics don't capture how you could see darkness strate sweeping over the canyoun.  We had about an hour to kill until the program.  We poked around looking for a sunrise option for the morning and then went to the talk.  The resident astronmer was good, he talked about a lot of the general stuff for newbies, pointing out many of the well known features of the northern night time sky.  

Because of the dark sky, he did go a bit deeper and we asked him a couple of questions that made him realize there were a few more well versed auidence members.   Prior to going outside to look up (scattered clouds was a little bit of a damper) He asked if anyone would be in Flagstaff the next night and to come to talk to him.

He had passes to go to Lowell Obseritory  the follwiing night.  Of all the luck, we were in Flagstaff LAST  night.and had reservations in Vegas the following night.  Oh well....  He later pointed out a bunch of visible constellations and it was a good talk.  We headed back to the room and set the alarm early for sunrise.

Hard to tell, but this is the first light from the east the following morning.  The cloud deck was in full play so it wasni't a banner sunrise, but hey, I'm at the Grand Canyon watching the sun come up.   Can't complatin too much!

Sun over the top of the lower cloud deck lighting up the cumulus far to the north.

The museum didn't open for another 90 min, so we headed back and checked out and had breakfast.  There were a fair amount of the these Rocky Mountain Elk around.  It was dating season so the bucks were friskiy!

Back at the hotel, JT went in the shower and I opened the blind and Mommy and baby were 10 feet from the window.  I sat there with my coffee and muffin watching them eat grass for at least 15-20 min until they left.

View from the Geology museum.  The flat plateau on the left with the point is, you guessed it, Plateau Point.  Lucy and I rode out there on the mule ride we went on in 1998.   From this pic it is (per the signage) 2 miles line of site to the point.  It is 4000' lower than us and 1000' above the river.  It took us 14 hours to go down and come back with all but about 40 minutes in the saddle.....yeah my butt hurt.

Actual rain in the GC.  First time I  have gone in Sept.  Other trips were both in May.  Apparently this is the we season.  Other two trips were zero clouds, so this was neat

The geology museum was also well worth the stop.   They had this really cool 3D map of the canyon and lots of other good info on the formation and history..

It was about a 4 hour drive to Hoover Dam and we had a dinner date inn Vegas, so by 9:30 we were back on he road heading west again.