My love affair with the Grand Canyon began twenty years ago. I had just gotten married and asked my new wife where she would like to spend her honeymoon. She gave me two options, either Israel (which was not a good start due to the political situation at the time) or the Grand Canyon in the US.

My first thoughts were why would I want to travel thousands of miles to see a hole in the ground. I had never visited the US before and had no particular desire to do so. (how wrong I was as the facts proved).

Anyway, a promise is a promise, so that’s what we did. We planned a Fly/Drive vacation in the southwestern United States.

Starting and ending in Los Angeles, we travel to the tourist destination through San Diego and move on to Arizona and visit some beautiful places along the way, until we reach the Entrance to the South Rim.

I have traveled the Far East during my time in the Royal Navy and seen beautiful sunrises and sunsets over the Indian Ocean, but nothing prepared me for my first view of the Grand Canyon at Mather Point. I guess I was hoping to travel up and look down into the canyon, however the surrounding area was flat and the ground suddenly collapsed to reveal ‘the hole in the ground’ that is the Grand Canyon. Native American Indians call it Lying Mountain. There were hundreds of tourists there, and yet it was as calm as if a bow had fallen over the crowd.

The magnitude of this ‘hole in the ground’ took my breath away.

No matter what time of day we visited the Rim, there was always a large number of tourists of all nationalities and it was always quiet. A silence only broken by the click of cameras and video recorders as people tried to capture the beauty of the canyon. I took hundreds of photographs and always failed to capture the grandeur of the landscape and the light playing on the rocks.

We stayed for two nights and three days on this our first visit to the Grand Canyon and have been back a dozen times, only once have we visited the US without visiting the Grand Canyon and that was when we looked at Florida.

The Grand Canyon is truly our spiritual home.