Adventures in the Grand Canyon 04/16/08

Getting connected to the internet has been spotty for the past few days but I’m glad to be on tonight. As usual, we have had a few adventures since my last post.

The past 2 days we have hiked along the south rim of the Grand Canyon and the views have been awesome. I’ve taken about 100 pictures every day. Remember the tripod that I had to buy the other day because I left a part at home that fits into the tripod that I brought? Well, yesterday I lost the same part on the new tripod! I am so aggravated at my own carelessness. I was too lazy to unscrew the part and leave it in the tripod so I just left it on the bottom of the camera.

We took the shuttle to Hopi Point and watched the awesome sunset. It was so cold and windy that I was freezing when we got back to the campsite so we went straight to bed. There was no one else in the campground but us and about 3 other campers. (Maybe someone knew something that we didn’t). For some reason we must have not eaten enough fat because we were both up all night freezing. Finally at 6:00 we got up and went to the cafeteria for hot coffee and breakfast.

Then we decided to try to hike down some of the Bright Angel Trail. We tried to hike down some of the South Kaibab trail but the heights were too much for Don so we had to come back up to the trailhead. I think the problem is that the wind was really gusting and he had slipped on a sheet of ice. I was surprised today that we hiked down a couple of miles without too much trouble. It wasn’t as bad coming back up as I had imagined because the stories sound horrific.

When we reached our car, we decided that since it was supposed to get down to 12 tonight we would ride to Williams (one hour away) and get a hotel room. Who knows what the wind chill factor would be like and we didn’t want a repeat of last night. When we tried to start our car, it wouldn’t start! I ended up calling AAA and they sent a tow truck. I didn’t know that AAA has a tow truck right in the Grand Canyon National Park so it only took minutes for the guy to jump off our car. We have no idea how the battery ran down other than it is a hybrid and maybe it has been only running on battery for the past few days without recharging.

Nothing else can go wrong because we are in a toasty hotel room (Red Feather Lodge) right outside the park. There is a Wendy’s next door and a McDonalds across the street. It has heat, hot water, a wonderful shower, great TV, and wifi! I think we have died and gone to heaven!