The Colorado River is an amazing body of water; it stretches from the central Rocky Mountains in the US to the Gulf of California in Mexico. We first crossed the river at Page, where the river is regulated by the Glenn Canyon Dam.

We found out the hard way that Page is an expensive town for no apparent reason. Crappy motels cost 200$ per night and up; they pretty much take advantage of the tourists who come here to visit the nearby Antelope Canyon. We managed to find a descent place to stay for 100$ per night, thanks to a last minute cancellation, which was very lucky for us. 

Unfortunately we did not see Antelope Canyon, because it was closed at the time of our visit due to some bad weather. We were of course disappointed, but that's life. I have found this video on Youtube about Antelope Canyon - it looks fantastic.

From Page we drove to Grand Canyon, and it quickly became apparent to us that we were not only following the Colorado River, but also the bad weather. In spite of the clouds, the fog and the rain our first pictures of the Grand Canyon turned out to be pretty good.

The next day we had a nice sunny day and decided to make the best of it by combining a hike down to the river with an easy stroll on the rim. We chose the South Kaibab trail down to the river instead of the more popular Bright Angel trail, because it is less crowded and offers a 360 degree view of the canyon.

Walking down to the Colorado River is a whole day endeavor, and as we did not want to use our one day in the park on that, we turned back after the second lookout point.

After getting back to the rim we headed to the Geology Museum, where we learned about the different layers of rock in the canyon and how the canyon was formed about 5-6 million years ago. The exhibition was quite good, but a bit crowded.

From the Geology Museum we continued our hike on the Trail of Time which is an interpretive walking trail that focuses on Grand Canyon vistas and rocks.

This is the oldest stone in the Grand Canyon; it is 1,840 million years old.The Trail of Time was fun and interesting, but it ends at Grand Canyon Village, which is crazy crowded. It was difficult to get the shuttle from there back to our hotel in Tusayan. 

I think Grand Canyon is breathtaking and definitely worth a visit, but compared to the other national parks we have visited in the US, the options there are very limited: you either walk on the rim and take thousands of pictures of the same view or walk down to the Colorado River and do the same thing. All the other national parks have various hiking options, where you can see different things such as lakes, glaciers, mountains and wildlife, therefore, I found those parks more entertaining than Grand Canyon. In other words, one day is sufficient time to see Grand Canyon and to take your "sitting on the edge" cliché picture.And as you can see you also have enough time to relax and enjoy the view.