Photos: The Grand Canyon in Arizona

Most people view the Grand Canyon from the rim and marvel at the massive size of the canyon stretching as far as the eye can see.  It is an entirely different experience to take a raft trip through the Grand Canyon, exploring its intimate nooks and crannies.  There are many side canyons with scenes such as this. We hiked to Shinumo Falls, which was so beautiful to experience as you can see from this photo.

When rafting through the Grand Canyon, it is possible to lose sight of how deep it is.  In most places the inner gorge towers about 1,000 feet (300 meters) up from river, but behind the walls of the inner canyon it is another 4,000 feet (1,200 m.) to reach the top of the Grand Canyon.

The Colorado River through the Canyon, provides a contrast between rushing water that blurs the image, such as the photo above, and placid water, that allows reflected images of color from the canyon walls onto the river, such as the photo above and below.

The National Park Service has just recently announced that it will vary the releases of water from the Glen Canyon Dam above the Grand Canyon so that the river will have variable water levels, as a natural river would if it were not dammed up.  Environmentalists have praised the decision.

Our raft trip stopped at many places on the 10-day journey through the Grand Canyon so we could take hikes into side canyons.  The hikes exposed us to the geological history of the Canyon, indeed, of planet Earth, as the Canyon exposes layers of geological evolution in a uniquely visible way.  We stayed at Lower North Canyon and hiked back into the area behind camp and this is where I took this photo. I will post more photos from this trip in the future that will share more of the experience of this incredible journey as I spent ten days camping along the Colorado River.