Grand Canyon - South Rim

The drive from petrified forest to the Grand Canyon was uneventful, and mostly desert until we got to Flagstaff.  Immediate change in temperature and landscape!  Flagstaff seemed like a cute city, lots of pine trees and cute store fronts.  I was very excited to get my first view of the Grand Canyon, so once we arrived, we went straight to the visitor center, and headed for the rim.  It was as awe-inspiring as I expected.

We camped while we were on the South Rim, and the boys had fun helping us by getting water while we set up the tent, and then we had a nice spaghetti dinner followed by s'mores.  We made sure Brandon got his junior ranger packet so he could start working on that right away.  He finished it by the end of our second day in the canyon.

We did a lot of the scheduled activities, including the campfire talk in the campground (heard some tall tales about the Grand Canyon about the Condors), the fossil walk (very cool!! - below are fossil shells)

And we hiked part of the scenic drive and then took the bus to Hermit's rest -- needless to say I took tons of photos, here are a few (there are a few more on Facebook):

A wonderful sighting of the extremely endangered California Condor

 One of the highlights for me was watching the sun set over the canyon -- almost as spectacular as sunrise on the North Rim (more on that later...)

Overall the camping was fun, the boys fared extremely well on the hikes, particularly the hike into the canyon on Bright Angel trail:

More to come from the North Rim!  (if you can't wait, I have posted some pictures on Facebook)