Grand Canyon

Wednesday, August 17

From our campsite, it was about 40 miles to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon

Today was the day that we decided to visit the Grand Canyon. We started out with a slow morning and hit the road for the canyon around 10:30.

On our way through the park, we saw 2 huge packs of bison! There were about 30 in the first group and 50+ in the second. We pulled over and watched each group for a while, those creatures are massive. At one point a few got up and threw themselves at the ground to kick up dust. We weren’t really sure why, but a bunch seemed to be doing it. When we got there, our first stop was the visitors center so we could stamp our passports and I could buy my postcard.

No zoom necessary, they were that close.

There is no way I'm climbing that thing. (As Evan dangles his feet.)

From there we went on a short hike to the rim of one part of the canyon. Evan climbed every rock he saw, and I think I took about 10 pictures of every rock I saw. I ended up climbing two of them with him, that was more than enough for me.

This canyon was huge. I don’t have any more words for it. It was beautiful and incredible and just wow.

By the time we had gotten to the point of the rim a big thunderstorm had built up on the other side of the canyon, so we decided to head on back to the visitors center. We thought that we had a scheduled mule ride at 5:30, so we went ahead and got lunch at the dining room at the head of the trail and took our time there.

While we were eating Papa said, “I’m thinking about the blog and I don’t know what words we could use to describe the canyon.”

I said, “massive.”

Mimi said, “spectacular.”

I came back and said “It really is indescribable.”

Then Papa looked at Evan to see what he had to say… Evan said “big.”

When we went back to the visitors center to see where we were supposed to meet for our trail ride, they told us our tour was actually at 7:30 that morning, and that we had missed it. Luckily, they had 4 people for tomorrow’s tour cancel, so they booked us for that one. (This means us leaving the campsite with a packed up RV around 6:45 tomorrow morning.)

Once we heard that, we decided we’d check out an overlook and head home. On our way to the overlook, a huge thunderstorm actually came down and dumped rain on us, at one point there was even some hail! At that point we decided to turn around and head back home. Of course we stopped and watched the buffalo on the way out, because they hadn’t moved much while we were in the park.

Once we got back to the campsite, we hung up our enos to nap and read before heading in to make some of Mimi’s famous pancakes. They were delicious.

Now we have to get to bed because it’s going to be a very early morning tomorrow.

Thursday, August 18

Today has been a long day. But not a bad long day, just a long one.

Last night we agreed that we would wake up at 5:30 to pack up the RV and drive to the Grand Canyon. Well. We definitely didn’t get the whole 5:30 thing right. At the very dark hour of 5:07 Papa marched into the room saying “Kiddiepoos it’s time to get up!” Enough to say that Evan and I were not amused. By 5:15 we were all out of bed and fixing breakfast before cleaning up the inside of the RV (we had to wait for the sun to rise to fix the outside.)

By 6:30 we had parked the RV in an open area of the campsite and were on the road to the Grand Canyon. Once we were in the park we were stopped by a herd of bison crossing the street, not even 5 feet in front of us. We thought there were at least 70 of them out beside the road this morning.

Once we checked in for the mule ride we all hopped on our mules and got ready to hit the trail. Mimi was on Leslie, Papa was on Marty, Evan was on Bill and I was on Smurf. The trail ride was supposed to be around 3 hours but it ended up being 4, Mimi was thrilled. I think Mimi had the best time of all of us, she hasn’t stopped talking about it all day!

Mimi loves to ride the mules

On the switchbacks of the trail, you could look up or down on your fellow riders.  It was really steep.

And the views were fantastic!

Papa trods along slowly behind.

I guess we could call this our 50th wedding anniversary photo!

We've had an incredible three weeks~

We turned around at this tunnel and trudged back up the canyon.  The tunnel is at about the half way point to the bottom of the canyon.

We rode the mules about halfway down the canyon through about 100 switchbacks. At the rest area, our cowboy Mark took everyone’s pictures before heading back up the canyon. The view was gorgeous the whole time, as long as you didn’t look at the mule in front of you. As Papa said, “You don’t want to be on the south end of a mule heading north.”

After the mule ride, we hopped in the car and drove back to the campsite to pick up the RV. From there we drove to Zion, well, Papa drove, the rest of us took a few cat naps.

At Zion we settled in, visited the visitors center and ended up driving around the park.  We were only out about 45 minutes but I took 50 pictures.

Now I’m here editing them and writing the blog before heading off to bed.