A Grand day out

We drove into the Grand Canyon National Park and paid the $25 for a week’s unlimited access. We stopped at the first view point we came to which was the Desert View Point where the Watchtower is. You can see as many photos of the canyon as you like but none will prepare you for actually seeing it. Walking up and looking into the canyon provoked stunned silence followed by laughter at the scale. It’s hard to actually comprehend what you’re seeing.



We got back in the car and headed over to the Mather Campsite which is the largest and most central of the campsites. We payed up $36 for two nights and went to find our pitch. We got there to find a nice space to park in surrounded by a few trees, a personal bench and campfire.



After that we went to find the showers. For $2 you get an eight minute shower and I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a shower so much in a long time. We’ve not seen a shower since we left Miami Beach and that was several nights before. It seemed ritualistic preparing for the shower, setting everything out, having a thorough wash, drying off and then getting into really comfortable clean clothes. I felt like I should go for a slap up meal afterwards. I thought that I was getting a bit of a tan but it turned out that I was just filthy.

Once we were nicely relaxed we went to Yavapai Point to watch the sun set the sky on fire as it set above the canyon. Once the night came we could see the stars fully for the first time because there was no light pollution.




The next day we wanted to take a hike. We went to the visitor centre where a ranger recommended the Kaibab Trail which would provide ‘the most bang for your buck’. It’s a two day hike to the bottom of the canyon and back but we could do a decent amount in one day. They say that the amount of time you take to walk down is doubled on the way back up. We went down for about an hour and forty five minutes down steep winding tracks through all sorts of stunning scenery. The colour of the rock we were walking past changed as we climbed down between all the layers from grey to red to orange to a glistening quartz. The plants stayed the standard shades of green but every now and again you’d see red, purple or white flowers lining the path. We were probably the fasting moving people on the trail as most people were walking all the way down to a campsite at the very bottom. We managed to get quite far before finding a rock with a fantastic view of the river to eat lunch on.



The climb back up was a struggle. It was the middle of the day and the heat was really coming down. It seemed like no effort at all to climb down and you don’t really notice the angle you’re going down at. You certainly notice the gradient on the way up. We made it back up in about three hours stopping plenty of times.

We treated ourselves to another shower once we emerged at the lip of the canyon. Refreshing, but not quite as spectacular as the previous. We went to the store to buy some burgers and firewood. The rest of the night was spent keeping warm by our new heat source and eating some pretty nice burgers when they came along. I still smell of smoke now.



The next morning feeling a bit achey from the walk, we left the park on the way to our next destination. We wanted to go to the Grand Canyon Skywalk (http://www.grandcanyonskywalk.com/ )which looks fantastic but it would have cost us over $80 so we had to give it a miss.

I finished my book whilst cooking the burgers and I’m now moving onto my next.



J.