The Grand Canyon

Sunday night was a cold night and Brianne and I got little sleep. We woke up around eight and got our breakfast ready. We made scrambled eggs and had a pork chop from the night before. We decided on two trails, the very short rim walk at the visitor center and the hike that seemed to offer the best views and hiking, South Kaibab. On our way to the visitor center we got confused with the free bus routes and ended up on the other end of the park before we made our way to the right place.

The small walkway at the visitor center was our first real look at the canyon. This is an ovbious statement but it is HUGE. All the pictures I have seen of it never made it seem as massive as it is. You can't even see the river at most points. The size makes you feel so tiny and the beautiful colors of the rocks is just amazing. We went a liitle way down the trail before turning back to the visitor center to take a bus to the South Kaibab trailhead.

We had already planned only to take half of the trail before turning back and going back and thunder heads were already threatening on the horizion. We started down into the canyon. Looking out over the huge rift makes you seem small enough but once you decend into the canyon and keep going father and father down to where the walls are towering over you and you know that you aren't even a quarter the way down yet makes you feel like a flea. I was beautiful and scary going down the path into the canyon. There is nothing between you and a massive drop. A drop that still won't even take you all the way to the bottom.

The way down was pretty easy hiking but we knew the way up would be exhusting. It wasn't very long before we reached the first point of intrest, Oh Ah Point. We thought about turning around but we decided to go to where we had originally planned, Cedar Ridge. It was the same distance from Oh Ah point as Oh Ah Point was from the rim. By the time we got to it we were starting to get tired. We stayed there for a few minutes and ate some granola bars. After a few minutes looking out at the canyon that now towered above and stretched out below we started up the trail. It was very exhusting and I had a very hard time. To make it worse we had an incoming storm that was threatening us the whole way back and we barely missed it as it openned up when we returned to the visitor center. When we did finally get back to the visitor center we found out that the hike we took was a difficult one even if taken only to the halfway point.

We hung out at the center awhile to watch a little info movie on the canyon before getting some groceries and returning to camp. We hung out at the campsite the rest of the day, reading, getting in the car as it rained, avoiding the elk as they grazed though our campsite, and cooking our food.

The Grand Canyon was a lot of fun if exhusting and I enjoyed finally seeing the beautiful rift open up before me.

SMK