Grand Canyon 2024

After the 60th birthday camping trip in the San Fran area, we flew down for three days in the Grand Canyon because Alison's never been there. We flew into Phoenix and rented a car for the three hour drive to the Grand Canyon ... and then spent a half hour in the line to pay the park entrance fee because it's all done by rangers running your credit card, only two of the lanes were open, and they were not in a hurry. We arrived late in the day as a result, so our first hike would be the next morning. We stayed at Maswik Lodge, which was basic, but comfortable and spacious enough. The first day was spent hiking a significant portion of the rim trail, from the South Kaibab Trail Head to the Bright Angel trail head. That's roughly a 10 mile hike (a little longer with the additional walking from our the Maswik Lodge where we were staying). The Rim trail includes an entertaining "Trail of Time" feature where they lay out two billion years of history (exponentially) along the trail with various displays and posters corresponding to the "time" you reached at the portion of the trail. But the star of the hike was, of course, the views of the Canyon. The hike took a few hours and was enough for the day. We had a truly stunning sunset waiting for us at the other end.

Day 2 was Bright Angel trail; the trial head was close enough to Maswik lodge for us to walk to it. We took the trail to the first rest house, a 3 mile, 1,120 feet elevation change hike we did in about four hours. Most entertaining things we saw were the mule train (park rangers picking up trash along the trail) and one Long Horned Sheep that broke out the brush a few feet from Alison and then ran by me with maybe four feet between us.

We had enough time after reaching the top to do another segment of the rim trail, making it about half way to Hermit's rest (Hopi Point). Between the prior day and this one, we covered about 3/4ths of the South Rim Trail.

The next day, we drove over to the visitor's center and caught the bus to South Kaibab trailhead (there is no parking there). At the trailhead, we saw an Elk but it was gone before I could get a picture. We took the trail to Cedar Ridge, roughly the same distance and elevation change as Bright Angel, but with a very steep switchback section at the top of the trailhead. Along the way, we met the most dangerous creature that inhabits the Grand Canyon, the rock squirrel (which can apparently be very aggressive about food and who will bite you if you get close to them). Pretty stunning vistas and a lot more variety than Bright Angel.

That took about the same amount of time, so we hiked the section of the rim trail we'd done on day 1 to get to the visitors center where the car was parked. The next day, we headed back to Phoenix for the flight home.