Grand Canyon

Days 74-76

We arrived hours after dark, but luckily I had a simple two-man tent that assembles in ten minutes.  I put Claire in charge of sorting out the bedding while I made my most cooked meal of the trip: Ramen noodles.  My chef’s touch added cabbage, three eggs, zucchini, and mushrooms.  Seconds after dinner we passed out.  I have to give Claire props because she was tough for enduring the cold.  I did not know how cold it would be either night that we were planning on staying and both nights it was 28 degrees or colder and there were no complaints.

The next morning we made scrumptious pancakes with blueberries, coffee, and eggs.  We packed a tuna sandwich lunch for our day at hiking and set off to see the Grand Canyon (we took liberty in pronouncing it with a French accent to reaffirm our tourist tendencies and to be funny).  All of a sudden we realized that we had been sleeping on the South Rim of the Canyon and that the mile deep crevasse was within ½ a mile of where we camped.  We got direction for where to visit and what to see, but I quickly learned that your time at the Grand Canyon should not be spent seeing things, but doing things.  We hiked along the Hermit Rim road for a few miles stopping at a number of picturesque viewpoints, but the really cool, cliff-edged hikes were much longer.  There are a few hikes like the one to Plateau Point that were visibile from a lot of the viewpoints above and it killed us because we had not planned better.  But I have to say, I do not regret the trip because we did everything that you could see from a car, including the Dessert Road and we maximized our time there.  Some of the cooler hikes were about fourteen miles one way so in reality we played it well. 

Cute baby

We took some sunset shots from the South Rim and then had time to shower before the facility closed.  That evening, we made a chicken fajita feast.  I made a fire while Claire made her impressive Guacamole and grilled veggies.  We feasted and roasted smores in lieu of it being Halloween. 

Yesterday, we woke up fairly early, packed up, and chose to hike part of the South Kaibab trail, which was a portion of one of the more “fun” trails.  See, we did not know that to hike all the way down the South Rim and to the hotel at the bottom required six months of planning in advance, so the lesson is that were coming back. 

Our tent scene.

The Grand Canyon is unbelievable.  It is insane because the huge tectonic plates bleow the earth’s crust vertically shifted a lot of square miles.  So if you look away from the Canyon you see miles of tree-lined plateaus, but if you look down the canyon (which is deeper than a mile) or across the canyon (wider than than a mile as well) there is the North Rim which stands at 8,000’.  The point is, that the Colorado River, erosion, continual tectonic movement, gravity, volcanic activity, and God’s touch created one of the MOST amazing terrains in the world.  My interpretation of the Grand Canyon is calling it a reverse mountain, but it is definetly one of the world’s wonders and I am happy to have squeezed a small portion of it into my trip with Claire. 

Later that day, we drove the Desert Road, which loops east and then south towards Flagstaff.  A nice couple recommended that we drive through Sedona to get a glimpse of the dessert and the monstrous natural earth outcroppings that are there. 

That evening we drove down to Pheonix to take Claire to the airport since she had to return to work in New York, but thank you for visitng me and being part of my trip.  Vegas and the Grand Canyon would not have been the same without you.