I’m not just a fool; I’m a damned fool because who else in their right mind would consider sharing 33 photos, no matter how beautiful a day it was when ten years later, they finally turn to share the images of said day? Chalk it up to my moment of being a bird brain.

Alrighty then, one down and just these 32 to go.

Alrighty then, two down and just 31 to go.

I guess that won’t really work, will it? Maybe I should start deleting 20 or so of these because what can I possibly have to say about things such as tree needles?

Right, I’ll just follow that story about needles up with how much I love the twisted bark of trees that grow at the edge of the canyon.

And more rocks of a type I can’t say a thing about but think are as groovy as some of the rocks I’ve encountered on other visits, or in the bottom of the canyon, or in Utah, New Mexico, even Europe somewhere, or other I’ve been.

Sweet God, this is only the 7th photo, and I’m making an even greater fool of myself by seriously blabbering on about really nothing at all.

Maybe all those years ago, when I started this idea of blogging, which in reality was only seven years ago, I should have gone with the popular thing at the time, like the idea of a Photo of the Day blog.

I present you with the majestic and beautiful deer just chilling out not raising an eyebrow at us obviously gentle people that exude a love of everything.

Rock kaleidoscopes require no special twisting lens to appear as jeweled refractions of light with dancing colors tickling the eye; they just do it.

Is it even comprehensible that each grain of height that has accumulated here is another slice of time covering an age that dwarfs anything we’ll ever experience in our minuscule 80-ish years?

Alrighty then, I even caught the sign. This is Hermit Shale, dating to about 280 million years old which is closer to the top layers of the canyon you were looking at in the previous photo compared to the stuff at river level that is nearly 2 billion years old.

Before mammals, there was an ocean and landscape teeming with life, such as this fossil of a random mollusk that is over 250 million years old; dinosaurs hadn’t yet appeared

Not even my mother-in-law is that old. [It’s okay to groan at the stale obligatory joke]

Trivia points: the blue shirt I’m wearing is one of the shirts I wore down the Colorado River, which I’ll wear until mere threads survive.

I think I’m obsessed.

Yep, we’ve been on that river under that bridge.

Needing to take aim at some inanity due to having difficulty finding deeply meaningful things to say, I’ll just go with…birds fly…for this photo. Oh yeah, this is a scrub Jay, so there’s that, too.

I don’t know why I don’t carry my 70-200mm lens with me to more places, other than the thing is seriously heavy.

Sure, I, too, am thinking that maybe a couple of bird photos could have sufficed, but here’s a third so that’s that.

Canyon view without people.

The same view with people, in this instance, my wife and her mom, Jutta Engelhardt. Looking at my mother-in-law now I might have to reevaluate my joke about her and state as fact that she could be at least 200 million years old.

Come on, John, stop this barrage of endless Grand Canyon views. We get it; you are at the Grand Canyon and love everything you see.

It’s unbelievable that it’s already been four years since we hiked Jutta down that very trail you see in this photo. A tiny part of the South Kaibab trail that we turned around once we’d reached the Cedar Ridge overlook.

Indulgent lingering is what I’d call this.

I’ll bet this spire has a name, but I can’t find it anywhere; how about my editor-wife Caroline lend a sleuthing hand here?

Squirrel!

This is called Blue Grama, as opposed to old Grandma, who’s traveling with us.

If the sun is setting, I must be running out of photos for this glorious day.

But first, I’ll have to take 100 photos of the exact same place because you never know which one will be perfect.

Talking about perfect.

Even my mother-in-law is pretty grand.

The night sky after too many beers.