Road Trip: Destination North Rim of Grand Canyon 12-13 September 2015
Hiking North Rim of Grand Canyon
I slept in the back of my car last night, listening to huge raindrops slapping the sunroof, and I still had a fantastic time on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
Visiting the Grand Canyon, one of 23 UNESCO sights in the U.S., is all about seeing fantastic views and witnessing the incredible force of nature at work. Only 10% percent of the people who visit the Grand Canyon come to the north rim. So being here is about having hiking trails to myself; about being in nature with the only sounds heard being the wind, birds, squirrels and some scurrying unknowns through the underbrush. Except for perhaps 100 visitors around the North Rim’s Visitor Center, being here is like having the entire Grand Canyon to myself. It’s a marvelous feeling. It’s about nature’s shapes, colors and sizes on a Grand scale. It definitely is not for the acrophobic. (more…)
reputation for storms and rough seas. Well deserved, I learn. Sea Spirit departs what was, in perspective, relative calm seas around the Faroes on its passage across the open waters of the North Atlantic. Destination: the east coast of Iceland. A gain of time means an additional hour of flopping, swaying and bouncing on very rough seas. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being my experience of the Drake Passage Christmas 2007, tonight’s passage rates a 7. It is about 250 miles of 22′ swells. Our captain has “battened down the hatches” for the night. Rough indeed.
