The next morning we slept in (a trend here), missing the free breakfast per usual. We headed off to the Grand Canyon which was a short 2 hour drive. As we came into the park, there was a ton of traffic, I couldn’t believe it! It was must be terrible in the summer. After getting into the entrance, we drove up the main road into the park. We tried to pull into the main parking area across from the visitor’s center but it was chock full of cars. Many people were stopped just waiting for people to come back to their cars; it was nutty!
Finally we got out of that sitch and continued down the road, hoping the traffic would lighten, which it did. The one positive thing that came out of it was the fact we were able to cross so many out of state license plates off our list (nerd alert). I was able to catch my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon and holy cow, it is definitely grand! I thought Zion was amazing but the Grand Canyon is in its own category. I never really had this huge desire to visit the GC because it always seemed touristy. Everyone and their mothers seemed to have been to the GC before plus a lot of older people so I figured it wouldn’t have anything to offer to a young chick like me. How wrong I was! It’s absolutely incredible; it’s sheer size / depth is enough to clear all thoughts from your mind.
Snow was still covering some of the canyon but it was a warm day; the warmest we’d felt in over a week!
That’s the Colorado River down there
Weird
We stopped at a few points to take photos and picked up a hot chocolate (a theme of this trip) at the little gift shop on the west side of the park. We decided we had to take at least one hike to make our trip worthwhile. There were only two that would take less than 2 hours round trip, so we headed to the east side of the park. We went back to the main parking lot and were hope hope hoping someone would leave. Lo and behold, a guy gave us a little bit of a head nod to indicate they were leaving. SCORE! We hopped out of the car and jumped on the green bus to the South Kaibab trail, a steep hike that goes a little bit down INTO the canyon. Actually it goes quite a bit down but as it was getting late, we wouldn’t be going too far.
As we headed down, we saw mules! A whole pack of them was coming up, most likely from one of the campgrounds down on the bottom as they were lugging up trash and recycling. The guys riding them looked like real cowboys too.
There was a bit of snow on the ground so it could be a bit slippery on the way down; and I mean DOWN. Down, down, down… we walked about a mile where we came upon a lookout. It was a huge rock and it was awesome because when you sat on it, you could just look down and see massive the canyon is. (P.S. Check out that beard)
After taking in as much as we could from this point, we headed back up the trail to head to the gift shop before they closed. It was one of our last national parks and we had been itching to pick up the National Parks Passport we’d seen at the various parks we’d already been to.
I power walked up the extremely steep trail; partly because once the incline is that steep you just have to keep going and partly because I wanted to prove I could do it. People like to underestimate me so I like to surprise the masses sometimes.
Sweaty and tired, I cooled down by walking around the parking lot as the sun was starting to droop; I was feeling quite satisfied with myself. I didn’t feel as guilty going to the gift shop. We had our arms full of gifts when we realized neither of us had money!! Being that he has longer legs, Boo ran like the wind to the car as they made the announcement they were 5 minutes from closing. Oh no! We were about to lose our National Parks Passport! And the finger puppet owl I had fallen in love within 2 minutes. And of course the postcards that had the reprints of the vintage National Parks posters from the 40s (that’s my new thing).
Luckily Boo is like Michael Johnson and he made it back as they were giving everyone the evil eye. Success! As we walked back to the car, the sun was coming down and it was beautiful.
Off to Scottsdale! Because we’d taken a little longer at the park, we wouldn’t make it in time for dinner so at the gas stop we had a little subway. Usually an “ew” from me but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Plus this one didn’t have “the smell” emanating from it.
We arrived in Scottsdale a little after 9:00P and were greeted by Kurt and the dogs. They were a little scared of Mason, which is understandable. We played a little Wii (including a boxing match between Boo and I that he won… barely) that night before heading to bed.
