The Grand Canyon: Rim trail, part 1

As usual, I have way too many photos to inflict on you from my Grand Canyon trip.  It's not my fault, the weather was perfect, and even when it wasn't, it made for interesting photo conditions.

Here are a few photos from the first day of my stay there, September 29.  I hiked about half of the Hermit's rest portion of the rim trail.  I think I could have done more, except that my photographic addiction slowed me down.  It was a hot day though, and although the trail is in partial shade from trees along the rim, it was still a tiring hike from the heat (not that it was that hot by Grand Canyon standards, around 85 degrees).

I thought this building below was the old Kolb photo studio, but then I realized another building holds that distinction.  Whatever this used to be, it's now a gift shop:

You can see the Bright Angel trail in this shot (which I will hike part of on a subsequent day, stay tuned):

I just love the trees along the rim.  The extreme weather that they're exposed to create some very interesting shapes:

Here's a first view of the Colorado river, way down there, about a vertical mile below:

It's very brown, the Colorado river, but I guess when you consider it's carrying away all the sediment that carves the canyon, you'd expect it to be.

Here's the river looking in the other direction, from another point along the trail:

I'll have more photos from this hike posted in a couple of days.