Grand Canyon

Well, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was not entirely what we expected. When we thought “Grand Canyon”, we thought “Big hole in the ground with a little river along the bottom, and not a living thing within sight except for cars.” We were happily surprised on the drive up to the north rim that it’s actually pretty heavily forested with pine and aspen trees all the way up to the rim. This is mostly due to the fact that its over 8000-ft of elevation. We were also happily surprised that a cold front moved on overnight so we had uncharacteristically cool temperatures with highs in the upper 60s. This mad the mostly flat 12 mile hike along the rim on Widforss Trail out to a view point of the canyon really nice. It would have only been 10 miles, but with the cold front that moved in, there was a tree down over the road about a mile before the trailhead parking lot, so we just parked the car on the side of the road and walked. There were several people that were stuck behind the tree, but I guess they managed to get a hold of some rangers, and the tree was gone by the time we got back.

While we were sitting on the rim of the canyon, looking down at the bottom of the canyon a mile below, and the opposite rim 10 miles away, and extending to the horizon either way, that they were a bit modest when they named the place. Instead of “Grand Canyon” I probably would have gone with “Absurdly Gosh Darned Really, Really Enormous, No Really I’m Not Joking Its Preposterously Huge Canyon” but I guess the explorers in those days were more concise than I.

That night we stayed at Jacobs Lake, which is about 30 miles north of the canyon. In this case the explorers were not so humble – I’ve seen bigger puddles. In any case, the camp ground was nice if not primitive. It had a shower though, which counts for a lot these days. With the cold front having just passed, the pleasantly cool day turned into a fairly cold night. We crawled into our bags at dusk, and bundled up for the night. Although neither of us were too cold during the night, we found our water jug that we had left out overnight was frozen in the morning. Not what we had expected in Arizona in June.

The South Rim of the Grand Canyon on the other hand was exactly what we expected; dry and barren except for the cars. After getting our fill of canyon views from the north, the south ended up being more of the same, but more crowded including parents walking around with their kids on leashes (not kidding).

Oh yeah, and I got a new hat. You'll be seeing more of that later.

We didn’t stick around too long, and headed south to Sedona for the night.