Our first day at the Grand Canyon and we had to stay for sunset. Right before dark we made our way down to the last look out point at the south rim, Hermit’s Point. The sun going down on the canyon was beautiful even though it created a lot of shadows.

This time of the year the sun goes down far to the left so it was not as perfect as I had wanted.

I struggled to get the canyon visible in the sunset shot. You can just barely see the Colorado river to the right. It’s weird how perfectly flat the top of the grand canyon looks. It’s like someone took a ruler and cut it off flat on the top. (Yes, I do know who that someone is.)

Everyone getting that last shot. That’s Beth in the white sweater on the left, focusing to get the perfect shot.

Almost down.

A teeny bit more to go.

Only a sliver left. Once it was dark, we hopped back on the shuttle bus back to the parking lot. I climbed in the back seat of our rental car and was going to try to take a nap on the way back to Flagstaff. The road was bumpy so I barely dozed. I had been on two planes early that morning to get there so I was tired but used up every second of daylight at the canyon. About a half an hour back to Flagstaff I felt the car come to a stop. It was after 9:30 at this point. I opened my eyes and looked up and saw a large elk with beautiful antlers slowly walking across the two lane road. He stopped for a second and looked at the car. No one else was on the road.  We all sat there silently for a few seconds as he walked across and then he darted into the woods on the other side. I broke the silence by saying “Did I just dream that?” It was quite a moment. Hubby was like “Where’s your camera? Why didn’t you take a picture?” It was already packed up for the night and the elk was gone so fast. It was kind of nice to just enjoy the moment on our first night in Arizona.

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