It's hard to take a bad photo at the Grand Canyon. It is spectacular and a great place to visit, photograph and enjoy. The same holds true for other national parks in the US and Canada that I've visited.
The "kit" lens we have and that I used to take the photo and other kit lenses (no matter the brand) usually don't get a lot of respect. They do have their limitations and some shortcomings, but they can produce some nice results if used properly . For instance, I stopped down a bit from maxium aperture to get more depth of field and attribute the image's sharpness to lens' IS, not to a steady hand.
I think I was lucky with this shot. The way the emerging early morning sunlight bleached out or overexposed the background at the top of the frame wasn't planned (thank you AE Evaluative Metering) . I was able to enhance some of the pastel-like colors of the canyon in post that weren't readily visible in the Raw image and I think that improved the shot a bit.
