The Five Hobos: Grand Canyon

What can I say about the Grand Canyon? It's big. And deep. I was overwhelmed with my first view of it, trying to take it all in. We arrived mid-afternoon Thursday, after the longest RV setup time in history. OMG. For some reason, we just couldn't get the trailer in the right spot, ended up unhooking it from the truck and having to rehook it up to move yet again, because the slide wouldn't open all the way. And this was a pull-through. It was just one of those days.

Our first view of Grand Canyon

I'm here too.

No, you may not rappel down.

Pretty breathtaking.

Maggie posing outside the geology museum.

After we were finally set up, we drove back into the park to see the canyon. The visitor center is very nice, looks news, and the walk to the canyon is short. So we took in the views in mostly stunned silence for a few minutes. The kids also signed up for the Junior Ranger program, so they were working on their workbooks while we walked.

View from the top of the trailhead.

Friday, Jim and I got up really early to hike down into the canyon. You see, there are these super-easy walks around the rim, and then there are the hikes down into the canyon. They ranger from moderate to you-will-die-if-you-try-to-do-this-in-one-day hikes. The tricky part in choosing the right hike is that you really have no idea when you are hiking down just how hard it will be to hike back up. Throw in huge temperature changes (from upper 70s at the rim to well over 100 at the bottom) and the elevation (over 7000 ft), it's a little daunting. The views are worth it though. We went down a little over a mile into the canyon, to Ooh Ah Point. We made it back up without dying too, so all was well.

The switchbacks are carved into the ridges.
There are A LOT of them.

Those same switchbacks from below.

More of them. At this point I was starting to
wonder how they retrieved people who got
down but couldn't get back up.

Isn't he cute!

Bright sun!

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We made it to Ooh Aah Point. Now to get
back up.

The view from Ooh Aah.

Still a long way down.

The way the water carved the canyon and
left these undulating lines is so amazing.

This is some of those upper switchbacks
from further away. See the little black speck
of a person walking down.

This is from back near the top looking down
at the trail we had come from. We couldn't
see it when we were going down because
we didn't know where to look. It is very well
camoflouged in the rock.

The is looking back at the trailhead where we
hiked down, from across the small side
canyon. You can see some of the trail.

The lobby of the history el Tovar hotel. Lots
of animal heads.

We finished up the day exploring more of the park, hearing about the California Condors that are making a comeback in the park. There were 22 condors left in the world in the 70s. Now there are over 200 and 77 of them are at Grand Canyon. We also enjoyed an art exhibit of paintings that were done at a Plein Air festival last weekend (wish we could have seen that). They have an artist in residence program that Kate is aspiring to.