Road Trip 2010! Day 3 / Grand Canyon

We all had a bit of a rough night last night. I don’t know whether it was the hard ground, long drive that day, excitement over the next day, or something else but Justin, Sarah and I had a hard time sleeping. Justin and I had an especially hard time and probably only got 3-4 hours of sleep. On the bright side, it made getting up early to get into the park and start hiking pretty easy. We got up around 6 and packed up the tent then headed into town to grab some ice for the cooler, fill up our water bottles, and head into the park. This time we went right through the entrance plaza and parked at the main information center. We looked around at the displays for the various hikes in the park and, after noting that it was strongly recommended that we not try to go down to the river and back, decided to hike to the first rest house on the Bright Angel Trail, which goes down 1,100 feet in only 1.5 miles. We caught the free shuttle (which actually worked pretty well for getting us around the park) and hopped off right next to the trailhead.

We were fortunate that the weather was pleasant – about 75º at the rim with a nice breeze and clear skies. We headed down the pathway into the canyon and enjoyed the incredible rock formation and ridiculous views from the side of the canyon. Climbing down the canyon, following your progress relative to the rock formations, and comparing them to the rocks on the other side gives you a real perspective of just how incredibly deep the canyon is. Seriously, it’s deep. Even with the foreknowledge that going down would be significantly easier than coming back up, we walked about an hour down into the canyon before turning around to head back. The going was a little slow, especially since the weather was starting to heat up a little bit. We did eventually make it back up to the top and it was very rewarding to see how much elevation we had covered during our hike.

Afterward we went back to the information center to get some lunch and decide about our next move. Sarah and Justin were feeling pretty tired at that point, whereas I had plenty of energy for some reason that I don’t fully comprehend. I changed really quickly into my workout clothes and took a run along the rim trail from the visitor’s center to the Trailview Overlook. It was an amazing view at the end, and a challenging 4-mile run to get there. From the overlook I could see out over the forest that leads up to the rim and on to the mountains that lie between 30 and 60 miles away. From there I ran back into toward the park and caught a shuttle back to the information center. On the shuttle ride back I got a little surprise when a 7-point buck elk walked across the road in front of the bus, and we passed a 5-point buck to the left of us. They are amazingly beautiful animals, and really large. Speaking of large animals, I hadn’t realized just how big mules are. We were passed by a few of them on the trail, and they basically look like donkeys on steroids – pure muscle.

When I got back to the info center we rode the shuttle again over to the Yavapai Geology Overlook to get another view of the canyon and see some of the geological displays about the canyon. From there we caught the shuttle back to the info center, then started to drive out to Desert View to see the Watchtower and yet another view of the Canyon. On the way over we saw lots of places where brush piles had been burned, and saw some of the fine handiwork of the US Forest Service. Out at the Watchtower we could see out over the plateau that leads up to the main Grand Canyon, as well at the gorge formed by the Little Colorado. After ward we climbed back in the car and drove out to Flagstaff, where we had booked a hotel after our terrible night of sleep camping.