Focus Friday: Let's Focus on the Grand Canyon - Going Down

I've been promising to tell you more about the Grand Canyon, but with the holidays the last couple of weeks I put it off. It's time to keep that promise and show you some pictures and tell you more about our trip.

Between Gary and I, we have 583 pictures of our trip. Would you like to see them all? No? I didn't think so. How about 25?

Here we are at the top soon after we arrived at the Grand Canyon:

It looks beautiful from the top, but it's even better when you get off the rim and descend into the depths of the Canyon. Here we are at the top of the South Kaibab trail:

You can't go in a straight line because it's just too steep. Switchbacks are everywhere!

You have to keep your eyes on the trail, but it's good to look up often so you don't miss the great views.

 I attached "Lizzie" to my backpack, hoping to alarm some fellow hikers. No one mentioned it on the way down, but some women in the bunkhouse commented on it and said it was cute.

 Ooh Aah Point:

Ooh Aah!

 It was pretty cold and windy at times on the way down, but I was prepared.

 We're still not at the bottom.

 It's hard to really capture the trail in pictures, but I hope you can envision the trail descending in switchbacks to the right in the next picture:

 A couple of times we had a group of mules go by. We stood to the side while they passed. Such hard-working animals!

 Stopped for a sec to make sure this rock didn't fall on Gary. I saved him! :-)

 We knew we were getting close when we could see the Colorado River.

 Here's the Black Bridge...and you can see a group of rafts at the beach on the left side of the picture:

A better view of the Black Bridge

 Here we are before going through the tunnel. We're almost there!

 Crossing the Black Bridge:

 A beautiful view of the Colorado as we cross it:

 We made it! There was no one around to take our picture together, so here are two pictures of us arriving at Phantom Ranch.

It was a great day of hiking, even though our knees gave us much more trouble than we thought they would. 

More next week about what we saw in the Canyon.

"Through him [Jesus] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." (John 1:3 NIV)

Have you ever visited the Grand Canyon? How about some other beautiful natural wonder? How can focusing on God help you to appreciate the things He has made?