So...#1 on my bucket list when we started this big adventure of seeing our beautiful country?...Undeniably for me, with no competition, was The Grand Canyon! Karl had been here before with his son (although briefly), but I had not and had always hoped I would...
We arrived on June 15th and as soon as we checked in and set up camp we put the AC on in the trailer for Penny and headed off to the Visitor's Center and the brief walk from there to "The Rim". I teared up and became all verklempt when I first saw it, and for the next 16 days it continued to take my breath away with its magnificence! Pictures cannot do justice to the GRANDNESS and the mind-boggling fact that every angle you looked at gave you a different view or a different appreciation for nuances of the colors and textures of the formations involved... Then add onto that the variances brought upon with the lighting of the different times of day or the shifting clouds - it's ALWAYS CHANGING!
For the record, power walking on the rim is NOT an option because you simply HAVE to keep stopping in your tracks to take it all in! Oh, and then you have to factor in that most of the time you are standing close to the edge so you have to do so slowly, carefully and, in our case, not at all in ANY type of daredevil manner! As a matter of fact, when you look at the pictures included in this post I may, at times, appear to be "calmly" standing near the edge. However, you can be assured of two things: 1)I did my old lady walk/shuffle to GET to the point of the pose and then SLOWLY turned around for the picture taking opportunity and 2) I/we are NEVER as close to the edge as it may appear!!!! Yeah, you'll never believe the wahoos that would climb/walk etc... out to areas that they should NOT have been out on - that was probably the only stressful part of the adventure.
As I mentioned in my Sunrise/Sunset post that I previously posted here a few days ago with THOSE pictures, our friend Linda (aka "Dearie") joined us at the Canyon from 6/22-6/28. She rented a room in The Yavapai Lodge and it was actually a nice hotel room (not a rustic ruffing-it room that one might imagine). I stayed with Dearie during her stay and we would drive over to the campground for breakfast and dinner each day with Karl and Penny (and the very friendly and thirsty Elk that roamed the campground and are included in pictures below). The campground was about a mile from the our lodge room, so it worked out really well. Dearie and I walked and shopped and hiked and lunched during the day and took a drive out to some of the scenic points on a stormy afternoon. Storms at the Grand Canyon were pretty awesome because sometimes you could see the clouds hovering over the canyon and you could see it was raining or storming there, but then it never made it to the land. Other times we watched the storms move in (of which the locals were VERY thrilled as they had been experiencing a dangerous drought in the canyon) and we even got to experience some hail storms!
EDITOR'S NOTE: make sure you scroll to the bottom to get through ALL the adventures and pictures...
This pic above is the bus map for all the trail stops on The Rim. My peeps from Framingdoodle will be please to know that some things never change and that Karl (aka Forrest Gump) walked EVERY inch of the rim trail from Yaki Point to Hermit's Rest during our stay. That's about 14miles of trail - which was all done in the mornings before the sun got too hot. I also may have walked it all, but Karl was on a mission and we spent our last day at the Canyon filling in the few viewpoints that he had missed so he could check off his accomplishment ✔️. We also both walked portions of the trail REPEATEDLY - not to mention the minimal 1mile(+) walk it took to get to the trail each day (and also back). I'll put it this way - it was incredibly easy to get 10,000 steps in on most days and some days up to 20,000. This was accomplished on various surfaces; some rocky dirt paths, some on big rocks, some on paved walkways but ALL of it was beyond scenic!
One day Dearie and I walked about a mile down into and then a mile up out of the Bright Angel Trailhead. If we had started earlier than our 8:30AM departure time we would have hiked longer, but I heeded the well-posted warnings of the increasing heat and the fact that it takes twice as long to hike up the trail as it does to hike down - so we played it safe! This is a very popular trail and one that the mules take people down on. Although we saw and avoided lots of fresh donkey poop on our trek - we never did get to see them on the trail, which I was a little bummed about. However, it was a fun trail to check out and gave me an even greater appreciation of some of the hikers out on the trails.
When you look through the rest of the pictures, take note of the aqua blue Colorado River winding its way through the bottom of the Canyon. Towards the end of the post there is a picture of the same Colorado River, now reddish brown, winding its way through...the result of Mother Nature and her stormy flash-flood-warning rainy weather. Pretty incredible - although we felt bad for the people seeing the Canyon for the first (and sometimes only) time and assuming that that was how it always looked. But WE knew better - cuz we'd seen the view from every damn inch of the rim!
Before I sign off I just have to comment on one more highlight of the GC. The South Rim of the Grand Canyon is much more popular than the North Rim (which is a 4.5hr drive away). Consequently, the shuttle bus system they have in place is pretty damn impressive and helpful in getting people to the viewing points and various hotels and shops and restaurants (and campgrounds) along the way. Even on the most "crowded" days, it was always easy to get around via foot or shuttle bus to take in the views. I loved hearing all of the different languages being spoken and the obvious awe in everyone's voices in whatever language they were speaking! I loved offering to take pictures when you saw a couple or some friends or a family trying to get that perfect selfie! It didn't matter the language - the gesturing of "do you want to take a picture of ALL of you?" was easily understood and 99.9% of the time accepted and appreciated! It was a way for us to all communicate with each other the unspoken works of "HOW AMAZING IS THIS??????????!!!!!!!!...."
Pictures of the North Rim & it’s comparison to the South Rim will follow SOON!! Don’t forget to check back!
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