I had an early rise this morning, to take pictures of the sunrise from Yavapai Point. As it ends up, there was a beautiful, slender crescent moon to grace some of the shots. Watching the sun’s orb rise from behind the ridges and buttes was truly amazing!

We hurried off to an early breakfast, and took a little time to get cleaned up and decide what to do with our day. This was the first day we didn’t have to travel, so we had the luxury of time to plan, and time to rest.

We elected to take the free shuttles on the route to Hermit’s Rest. The buses were supposed to run every 15 minutes or so, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right? Well, we got off the bus at the first stop, and waited forever for a bus to come by, only to have to stand up through the next few stops. We quickly elected to ride that bus all the way to Hermit’s Rest, and see if we wanted to stop anywhere along the way back.

Hermit’s Rest was beautiful, and gave us our first views of the Colorado River. We could see rapids from here, along with the scenic views that the Grand Canyon is famous for.

We finally got back to the lodge, and took a quick catnap, in preparation for the trip on Desert View Road for the sunset.

We headed out on the Desert View journey, and wound up at Lipan Point. As I discovered later, this was allegedly one of the best sunset spots. It didn’t disappoint! The biggest challenge was the wind. The gusts were easily over 35 miles an hour, and were depositing dust all throughout the camera gear. Not a big deal, and relatively easy to deal with. However, the bigger issue was significant cloud cover right at sunset. I shot and shot, using the wide angle, and just before the sun set, it peeked out of the clouds, and it was back to my long lens. After the sun set, I switched to the wide angle again, and shot the clouds until most of the light was gone.

We met a delightful couple from near London, and talked with them throughout the set of the sun.

Returning to the lodge, we had dinner, and crashed… hard!