Bad news. Terrible news. Catastrophic news. Dad's Sonicate toothbrush broke. He
considered canceling the rest of the trip and heading home, but Mom and Remy have convinced us to soldier on. We will do our best to work through this travesty.
We spent a very active two days at Grand Canyon National Park. We arrived Friday afternoon and quickly set up the trailer. We are staying inside the park so getting around is easy. The drive into the park looks like any other desert scenery, and there wasn't really anything that stood out as we got ready to go for a walk. Even driving through the park you don't really get a glimpse of the canyon.
Our first hike of the weekend was around the rim trail, which is several miles of paved trail that follows the canyon rim. We drove a few minutes to a parking lot and left our truck. As soon as you get in the trail the ground immediately drops away to reveal the full depth of the canyon. The views are vertigo inducing, and it takes a minute for the old brain to adjust to being able to see so far down. we walked as far away from the edge as possible. We did 8+ miles the first day, and luckily we were able to push the stroller and bring Emma along.i don't think our littlest family member is quite ready for that baby miles unassisted.
On day two we planned to hike down into the canyon. Mom had read several blogs and reviews and we flip flopped a couple of times as to which trail would be best. We settled on Bright Angel trail, our original choice, as it was the most heavily used. Having walked the rim trail yesterday, and having seen how sheer some of the drops can be, we weren't quite sure what to expect. Dad was certainly picturing hugging a rock face the entire time, but if a pack of mules could do it then surely we could too. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed in the canyon so we had to leave Emma to guard the trailer. Obviously strollers are not allowed either.
The trail is a mix of switchbacks, deep stairs, and shallow descent. The climb (down) is luckily quite gradual for they most part The first few switchbacks were the most hair raising, both because it took some time to adjust to walking down and because the cliffs are basically straight down at the top. Remy walked the whole way down ( on the wall side, always holding a hand) to the first rest area. There are two rest areas on the way down, one at 1.5 miles and one at 3 miles. We decided to turn around at the 1.5 mile stop, although we thought afterward that the 3 mile stop probably would have been doable. It took us a little over an hour to get down, and an hour to get back up (we were flying on there way up).
About 1/3 of the way down we bumped into a herd of bighorn sheep hanging out on the rock. It was both incredible and gut wrenching to watch them hop up what was basically a vertical wall. Dad was considering trying a few of their tricks but thought better of it. He didn't have the right shoes I guess.
The views going down were non-stop. Every corner brought a new rock formation or sight to see. We stopped at the rest point, which had a relatively clean bathroom, had a snack, and turned back up. It was very chilly in the shade, and we had to keep moving to stay warm. Remy was getting a bit tired on the way back up, so we alternated walking and retelling movie plots (Dad covered Alice in Wonderland, Robinhood, and Jurassic Park 1 and 2), and Remy riding on Mom's back in the carrier. Overall he covered the full distance down and probably around half the distance up. He is quite the hiker when he is engaged.
When we got back to the trailer Emma was very excited to see us. We had a quick lunch and thirty minutes of relaxing before going out to check out the rim trail In the oppoaite direction we had travelled yesterday. This portion of the trail turned out to be very unfriendly to strollers, so we mostly abandoned that and walked around the lodges and other buildings instead. One of the cool sights was a complete view of the trail we had hiked in the morning. It was really hard to get a sense of how far we had descended while hiking in the canyon, but the view from the rim gave us great perspective. We are already talking about coming back in the future and hiking all the way down and spending the night. Dad is going to have to watch a lot of movies in preparation for that hike.
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