Grand Canyon
Location: Arizona
Established: February 26, 1919
Carved by the Colorado River snaking through northern Arizona, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and attains a depth of over a mile. It's breathtaking and easy to see why 5.5 million people visited the park in 2015. As our home base was Sedona, we chose the easy accessibility of the South Rim's Desert View Scenic Drive, which follows the rim for 25 miles out to the Desert View Overlook, the most eastern view at the South Rim. Along the way, we enjoyed amazing views from six canyon viewpoints. Honestly, no words can describe the Grand Canyon’s sheer beauty or the experience of seeing it for the first time.
And, here’s a bit of trivia. In the 1950’s, passenger flights would sometimes detour over the Grand Canyon for a better view. On June 30, 1956, two planes flying from Los Angeles to Chicago, a United Airlines DC-7 and a TWA Constellation, had both requested permission to fly into the Grand Canyon’s airspace. The planes collided directly over the canyon, killing all 128 occupants of both planes. The Federal Aviation Administration was created in 1958 as a result of the crash.
