Grand Canyon. One word: Speechless.

The big problem with the Grand Canyon is that it's so big your mind shuts down upon seeing it. Seriously. You stand there mouth agape and you can't comprehend the sheer amount of space that lays before you. Awesome. At it's deepest: 6,000 feet. At it's widest: 18 miles. Yes. Where we first looked it's about 10 miles across, so Brian and I stood on the rim and looked over 10 miles of rock formations and felt very small and very humble and very, very much alive. After a while our brains turned back on and we drove over to hike into the thing. The hike was steep, in half and hour we'd gone 2,000 feet into it and stopped at an overlook to eat our lunch. The wind was brutal, the colors; astounding, under a clear blue sky we stood and screamed and our voices reverberated for miles around us. After our sweat had cooled our clothes in the chilly wind we turned casually to hike back up. There was nothing casual about the hike. In a matter of minutes we were sitting, cursing the month on our asses in a car. We kept going, minutes later we were breathless, bent over, fearful of even another step. After a few more breathless rest stops we finally made it. It was brutal and our bodies and lungs burned and we felt olympic. Truth be told, despite what we felt was a pitiful performance, we hiked up pretty damn quick—45 minutes when most do it in 2 hours. Hell yes. We felt like bad motherfuckers, with calfs like sequoias and lungs like hot air-balloons. Hell yes. After patting ourselves on the back we limped back to the car anxious to make camp and fall asleep.

(click to enlarge)