Arizona / 5 / Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon was unfathomable, of course.  It is easily discernible from space.  Many people have marveled at it.  Innumerable members of my extended family have trekked there to spent vacations, going down, camping and doing science...  As for myself, I would personally not be interested in taking some narrow little trail down with the drop-offs all over the place...  No.  Thanks. Not on a mule, either.   I don't have a fear of heights, but I do have a quite sensible fear of falling off one of these trails.  In the current newspaper of Canyon Village, a report told the story of a 68 year old woman who needed rescue at night because she had been holding onto dear life three feet from a 80 foot drop.  She had been hiking at 7:00 PM!  What on earth was she thinking.  It is pitch-black dark after 6:00 PM.  They needed to order a helicopter in the middle of the night while she lay still for eight hours until her eventual rescue.

The most interesting place to me was the geological museum right on the rim.  I tried to read everything they posted there as I always think that I have no idea what geology is about and should learn it.  Then when I try to understand it, I wonder if geology itself knows what it is about.  A billion years here, a million years, here, and oops, what happened to those billion years.  Some layers should be here, but they are not.  It is a mystery.  Then you peruse a book on geology that they sell here and you wonder if it is any better.  First picture:  a meteor hits the earth.  Oh golly.  That meteor.  Yawn.  Really.  That unsubstantiated meteor has to account for so much.

Whatever.  Time to give up on geology for now.  My husband caught a bad cold and I had to explore alone for some time.  I know, now, why our parents only spent about 5 min. with us at the Grand Canyon in 1973.  It is not a place for children.  Some silly young men stood pretty stupidly right on the rim.  They must all feel very sure-footed.

In Alberta, we have some very interesting valleys with hoodoos and fossils, too, which are not as dangerous to visit.  Some family might like to make its way to our badlands.  And our layer of dinosaurs is not missing.  Lots of dinosaur bones. And we have first class museums, too.