Day 7 - Grand Canyon

Thursday - September 12, 2019

We arose early this morning, packed a lunch and were on the road at 6:15 AM. It was a pleasant drive to the canyon with little traffic. We arrived a little before 8:00 AM. We had our day planned and after parking at the visitor center we immediately caught the shuttle to Bright Angel trail-head. We only hiked about 1.25 miles down the trail into the canyon, but the change in scenery and perspective was incredible. Getting on the trail early meant there were fewer people and the temperatures were pleasantly cool.

It is very deceiving how easy it is going down. Coming up is another story! During the summer, temperatures can reach 115 degrees.

This photo shows the trail we descended, this was taken only a few hundred yards below the rim.

We saw many of these little guys along the trail.

After our 2.5 mile hike on the Bright Angel trail we started our hike on the Canyon Rim trail. We did not hike the entire 13 miles, but did hike a little over half the entire trail and got the best overlook spots. A few of the photos follow.

A view from the rim trail of the Bright Angel trail. We hiked down to the hairpin curve you can see here.

I don't know who this was, but it made a good photo!

Another photo of the Bright Angel trail, it goes all the way to the bottom of the canyon.

A panorama composed of 5 photos.

We stopped at Hermit Rest and had lunch. I did purchase two Cokes (not diet!) for the carbohydrates. This amounted to our total expenditure on this trip $4.50. It was a pretty cheap day...

We caught the shuttles back to the visitor center - it took almost an hour to return and we had to stand most of the way. I was sure glad we arrived early and beat the crowds. We left the park along the eastern gate and enjoyed a few more different vistas.

This was taken near Desert Tower overlook in the eastern end of the Canyon. You can see the Colorado River clearly.

No photograph can come close to doing justice to the Grand Canyon. This reminded me of our visits to the Antarctic and the Great Wall of China. Scenes this epic just cannot be conveyed properly with photographs.

Friday we plan to visit Sunset Crater Volcano (which we visited in 2006) and do a little more hiking. I hope you enjoyed the few photos I posted.