It's here...the end of the year. Crazy. Time flies. Makes me think of the drive Char and I did from Southern California back home to Colorado two days after Christmas in 2009. We had our dog George in-tow, and were kidless. Well, sort of. Our first-born was due in just two months, and he kept nice and cozy while we explored a corner of the Southwest we had never visited.

We awoke at 4am in our Grand Canyon hotel room, and eased out into the darkness, driving toward the rim of the canyon, not sure what we were in for. We found a parking spot in the cold abyss, and our headlights hit nothing. We were there, I guess.

Creeping out of the car into one of the coldest mornings I can remember, I grabbed my camera, and we walked toward signs pointing toward Yavapai Point Overlook. Seemed like a good idea.

As the landscape slowly illuminated in front of us, I'll never forget the sense of scale of the canyon. It almost put out its own sound waves. It is deafeningly quiet.

The snow that had fallen the day before gave the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley great depth. Couldn't have asked for better conditions.

Our rest of the drive home to Colorado took us up and over some incredible terrain that evening, and we arrived home 21 hours after we had awoken that morning.