Northern Arizona University

 

Conference Banquet & Award Ceremony

On Friday, April 13, we'll leave the conference early and travel by bus to the Grand Canyon. If we time it right, we should arrive close to dusk, and we're hoping everyone will experience a stunning sunset at one of the world's incredible places.

Called one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon was carved by the steady erosion of one of North America's oldest rivers, the Colorado. It is about 277 miles (446 km) long, ranges in width from 0.25 to 15 miles (0.4 to 24 kilometers), and attains a depth of more than a mile (1,600 m). Nearly two billion years of the Earth's history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries have cut through layer after layer of the Colorado plateau. In the late 1860s, a one-armed U.S. civil war veteran named John Wesley Powell led the first scientific expedition into the canyon. Powell referred to the sedimentary rock units exposed in the canyon as "leaves in a great story book."

We hope you can visit the famous El Tovar hotel, experience the beauty of the south rim, and then join us at the Maswick lodge for drinks, dinner, and conversation with colleagues and friends.