June24, 2007

Yesterday was our day to ride the train to The Grand Canyon. The train was scheduled to leave at 9:00am and we were afraid that we would miss the train, so we got up at 5:30. At least this gave us time to go eat breakfast and to watch the early morning gunfight (they have several each day). The trip to the canyon took about 2 1/2 hours and passed through some very pretty country with lots of big ponderosa pines. Riding the train was a good idea since the canyon area is so congested with cars and parking places are hard to find.

The canyon is much more impressive than in pictures that you see. We took the shuttle bus to several of the overlooks located along the South Rim. Lots of people were taking hiking trails of various distances down into the canyon but our days of that kind of activity are over I think. Emily took one picture of hikers on a trail near the bottom of the canyon and the people looked like little ants. They surely had a long climb back out. We spent about 5 1/2 hours at the canyon and enjoyed it very much. On the trip back we rode in the dome of one of the cars. I took a picture of one named the GRANDVIEW, but it was not the one we rode on. The views on the trip back were great from the dome and we enjoyed the ride back even though we were very tired.

About five miles north of Williams, the train was held up by mounted outlaws. The train stopped and they got on and robbed the passengers. They only got a dollar from us since we told them that was all we had. I don't know if they believed us or not, but it worked. They wanted Emily's earrings, but she wouldn't let them have them. I told her to let them have them since they were not worth getting shot for. She said no and they went on to someone else.

When we got back we extended our stay by one night since we knew that we would be too tired too head out this morning. Therefore we slept in this morning and then got up and went to church.