We once again drove out of our campground and up into the Grand Canyon National Park, and parked in the vistor centre. Today we decided to head straight out to the furthest point west along the rim trail, and then make our way slowly coming back east - so we could see more of the south rim that we hadn't yet seen. Unfortunately this meant getting one shuttle bus to the village stop, then another connecting shuttle bus out to Hermit's Rest - the furthest point west along the rim. I say unfortunately because I found it immensly tedious. For what seems like it will be a short journey - and it is really - just seems to take so long. At each bus stop when people get on there is usually a packed bus, and so each time the bus driver has to repeatedly ask people to move right to the end of the bus so everyone can get on. Then when the bus stops again you have to wait as people struggle to get through and out of the bus, then as a load more people get on, the bus driver asks them to move back etc. I was very tempted to get off the bus a lot sooner but Stu insisted he wanted to go to Hermit's Rest.

Finally, we made it off the bus at Hermit's Rest! Firstly we sat down and had a quick snack, and then we started our walk along the rim heading east. We knew we wouldn't make it all the way back to the village by walking, but we just wanted to cover as much of the rim that we hadn't seen as possible.

There probably isn't a lot to say here that I haven't already said yesterday, as there were yet more amazing parts of the canyon to see along the way. Hermit's rest was actually the worst part really, as a lot of it was obscured by trees, but past there it was totally amazing yet again.

We found that along this route there seemed to be slightly less people than yesterday - perhaps not so many people want to venture too far from the visitor centre? There were also quite a lot of scary looking ledges that we found we could get some stunning views of the canyon from, and also some great pictures. Some were a bit frightening to stand on, but you had to do it because the view was just so irresistable.

At one of the viewpoints there were also a small group of Americans - it appeared to be a husband and wife and her parents. She was chatting to her father and saying 'Isn't it amazing that this canyon took millions of years to be created?', to which her husband then stated 'Or a day!'. The woman then said 'Oh yeah, maybe it's just made to look like it took millions of years to be created'.

I could feel some sort of Creationist nonsense was coming, and sure enough it was. The guy went on to give a 'great' Creationist analogy that he had once heard. The story basically goes that, if you were to walk into a room and hear a record playing and the needle was placed in the middle of the record, you would assume that the record had been played from the beginning. However, it is possible that someone had simply placed the needle directly into the centre of the record. I think this was his way of saying God created the Grand Canyon in a day. I say, what a load!

After a lot of walking around the canyon we finally found a good point for sunset. We took a short wander further on, just to kill some time and see another spot, before heading back as the sun began to set.

Despite today being slightly cloudier than yesterday, the sky seemed to clear up for the evening and it was a lovely sunset. Stu found a precarious looking spot over the safety rail to take his shots from. We stayed around until it got almost completely dark then got the two shuttle buses back to visitor centre, and then drove our motorhome to the same campground for the night once again. We got to the campground around 8pm, so just enough time to prepare a quick dinner and then go to bed - we were both shattered after another fantastic day at the canyon.