I try to have all the stuff I put up on this blog be from one week ago… meaning it is old news by the time you read it.  That hopefully gives me a bit more time to sort through stuff and  get it ready to post. (I know it may not look like it… )

But I have to mention the Coronavirus and our travels.  Back a long time ago, (Last week), we were still traveling, and spent time at the Grand Canyon.  Already people were somewhat afraid of each other, so we kept our distances, but there were still lots of people around.  We hiked most all of the South Rim of the canyon, and took tons of pictures.  There were places the dirt/mud trail was only a foot from the edge, and it was hard not to think about how far down the bottom was!  Here are a few of the resulting photos…

 

I can’t remember when we were here last, but it was too long ago!  The views are literally breathtaking!

 

The first afternoon we were hiking along (Can you call it hiking when the trail is pretty much flat??) and a storm quickly rolled in from the west.  We got a bit of rain, then some very tiny hail!  It passed pretty quickly too, and left us a beautiful rainbow! If you have good eyesight, you might notice a second rainbow too. It was also interesting that the rainbow seemed to be the edge of a bubble – with darkness excluded from the bubble. (Maybe that’s where we should live now… in a bubble with the darkness excluded!)

 

Have you ever been fortunate enough to stand taller than a rainbow?

 

The bright blue of this beautiful bird doesn’t show up too well here.

 

More odd birds…

 

Speaking of odd birds, check out these insanely fearless folks literally living on the edge!

 

A brightly colored helicopter flew up from the bottom of the canyon and pretty much right over us, carrying a long skinny parcel at the end of a long line.  From a distance it looked like it might be a stretcher, like maybe it was a rescue of some sort.  But if a sick person was in that basket, instead of inside the nice helicopter, he’d be getting sicker yet, because the basket was spinning slowly.  We decided it was lumber or building supplies.  Then the ‘copter dropped his load somewhere on the South Rim, and flew back for more.  We watched several trips, sometimes with a box, sometimes a bag or two.  We figured that’s how they take the trash out of the bottom of the canyon!

 

 

On the day that we were planning on driving out of the Grand Canyon area, we woke up to find two inches of snow everywhere!  Snow sneaks up on you very quietly during the night, so we were certainly surprised.

 

We’ve never seen the canyon in the snow, so we decided to drive the almost an hour trip back to the canyon and check it out.  Turns out there really wasn’t any snow in the canyon, but we did see another rainbow!  You will have to look closely at the next two photos to find it.

 

Only the end of a rainbow in this one. (Good eyes, Ashlyn and Bryan!)

 

Crazy photo man… carrying a tripod 10 miles in hopes of a tiny bit better picture!

 

So back to the world now… I know all you have seen grocery stores looking like this.  I’m putting these pictures up to document the craziness of this pandemic world.  I’ve never seen stores like this.  These were a few days ago; it will probably get crazier before it gets better.

 

So from the Grand Canyon we went to Death Valley (I hope that’s not an omen!) and an old ghost town that I fondly remember visiting as an 11 year old.  So next week you will see Death Valley, and the week after that – who knows?  Pictures of us hiding from viruses?  Stay tuned!