Truly Grand

o you know what it is like to be truly gobsmacked? we were staying in flagstaff and so the drive to the grand canyon was a good few hours away. we arrived just after lunch, paid the small fee and drove through dry rocky country, not really knowing what to expect.

suddenly, on the left, we saw, well, the grand canyon, just kind of sitting there with a layby next to it, and some germans filming it with a camcorder. we swerved over and landed beside the fence. and that’s pretty much what we did for the rest of the day, driving along the southern rim of the canyon.

there aren’t - thankfully - huge tourist developments there, you just drive along the road, stopping either beside it or taking tracks down from the road to car parks where you can see the canyon from various places. at the end there is a group of shops, an information centre and a small cafe, and from there, we watched the sunset.

we went on a sunny summer weekday and it wasn’t busy - i’d take your own food, and plan to grab a bite at the cafe. you can trek down or take a plane ride, but i was perfectly satisfied just standing there and looking at it.

it’s a truly spectacular sight - if you’ve seen a photo or a film of it you really haven’t grasped how big or how impressive it is. you say about an experience that you were stunned, that it took your breath away, but i really did have that, i really didn’t know what to say, other than just gape at the sheer scale of it all.