We’re off on our summer of vacationing in the American West, and our first stop is the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We’re spending only two days here, and not planning for all that much in terms of award winning photographs, but we thought it would be fun to visit as we made our way to California.
We’ve had the most fun at the Grand Canyon in the fall or winter. From a strictly photography point of view, that is the best time for us. The air is clearer then and once in awhile we get lucky and find a little snow on the ground just to accent the images. And of course, there’s a lot fewer people here in the winter.
This is the last weekend in July and as such, we expected wall-to-wall crowding, but yesterday we drove right up to the main gate, waited for about three minutes, and were in. Once in the park, we headed over to the East road and were surprised that nearly all the turn-outs had parking available. There were some clouds to make the pictures a bit prettier, and even though there are several active fires in the area, the smoke wasn’t too bad.
This morning (Sunday), we drove right up to the gate and were in with nearly no delay. Of course, it was 7:30 am and most folks were still sleeping in. We again made our way our to the east road, and in most cases, we had the canyon to ourselves. Not really, but there were surprisingly few people out and about early in the morning. When we left the park at around 10:30 am, we were amused to see that the line to get in the park was backed up about half a mile.
We plan to return later today and tomorrow to get some more images we didn’t do today, but we thought it would be fun to post some that we have for now, so please, have a look at what we’re seeing at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon today:
