"Grand Canyon National Park." a Grand Canyon Travel Page by dabidc

The Grand Canyon is located in the north west part of the State of Arizona, the National Park covers more than 670,000 acres and includes some of the most scenic parts of the Colorado river.

The river has eroded the canyon into some fantastic shapes and in doing so has exposed rock colours that are almost unimaginable.

Visitors can view the canyon from both the South rim and the North rim, the former is more easily accessible, while the North rim is more difficult to reach from places like Flagstaff or Phoenix.

The Colorado river flows from east to west and that is also how my photos have been arranged. It was fortunate that the visit was on a sunny day and covered most of the day, so there are some views that show the immensity and the perspective across the mile wide chasm.

I hope you enjoy, even though the visit was 7 years ago that is merely a blink of the eye in the lengthy history of the Canyon.

In general the colours are from the river up to the rim as follows.

The first layer is Archean and is black, followed by a layer called Algonkian which is a brilliant red. The third layer is Tapeats sandstone and is lavender-brown in colour. Moving up there is a layer called Devonian and this is lavender, not much of this layer, the next one is Redwall, naturally red, again a glowing red sandstone after that, this is the Supai formation. Following is a layer of Hermit shale, which is also red.

The last two layers are a Coconino sandstone which is sand coloured and the top layer is a cream/gray colour called Kaibab limestone.