The 12 most beautiful places in the world. No. 6: The grandest canyon.

Next up on my Top-12 – still stateside, and in fact just 500 kilometers away from Entry No. 5 (Delicate Arch in Utah) – we have Entry No. 6:

Grand Canyon, Arizona, U.S.A.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Grand Canyon isn’t the world’s largest – neither in terms of width, depth or length. But in terms of it’s meditative-ruminative-reflective & zoning-outative suitability – it beats the rest by a long way, at least those I’ve seen personally or seen photos of on the net.

Nearly 450 kilometers in length, this steep-sided ‘cut’ carved into the earth’s surface is in places nearly two kilometers deep! Oh my Grand! You can stare at this spectacle for infinity – and from an infinite number of different vantage points too; here’s one of them – at the very start of the Canyon – the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge:

(Oh wait… no – that is Glen Canyon. But it’s just a bit further up from the Grand Canyon, and it’s the same river so… why there are two names I still can’t work out. But there are.)

It’s been many years since I visited the Grand Canyon, so I’ve hardly any good photos of it. So I’ll use one I found on the net here instead. If you need more, there’s a zillion more there…

(Source)

The Grand Canyon is so famous, and so famously beautiful, it often comes out at the very top of lists of ‘the most beautiful places on the planet’. However, I beg to differ: to me, the most beautiful place on the planet is Krenitsyn Volcano, on the island of Onekotan, one of the Kuril Islands, off the far-eastern coast of Russia just above Japan. Admittedly, this volcano, the island it’s on, the Kurils, and the corner of the world they’re in are hardly known about at all by most folks, so I guess it’s only natural that it’s not deemed more often the world’s ultimate natural beauty. But I digress…

Btw, the Grand Canyon has a distant cousin – half the size, but just as oh-my-grandiose: it’s Fish River Canyon, in Namibia, Africa:

All righty: that’s enough on the Grand Canyon (it’s not like you weren’t aware of it before:). It’s time for No.7…