Thursday, May 16, 2013

Day 8 - Grand Canyon

Lots of pretty pictures today (but you can't see any of them until I get to somewhere that has wifi). I woke up early this morning. I don't know if its just because of the time changes, or because I'm so busy during the days that I'm so tired at night and fall asleep earlier, or if I'm just getting to a point where I need less sleep, but try as I might, I haven't been able to sleep in much at all on this trip. So after a while of using in bed trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, I made my way over to the lodge for breakfast. I'm not sure what their seating system was, but it seemed like parties of 3 or 4 were getting seated before parties of 1 or 2, so I hooked up with a mom and son from Tennessee and had breakfast with them. I really ended talking with them.

From there, I got all my water and whatnot together and headed out for the day. First stop: cape final trail. When I got there at 9:30, there were only 2 other cars there. The trail is 2 miles one way (4 miles round trip) and takes you out to a couple beautiful lookout points. It started out with a pretty massive hill, and, honestly, about 2/3 of the way up, I almost gave up. I even turned around and walked a few steps back for a bit until I decided to press on and just take it slowly. It was pretty shady on the way out there and somehow right as I got out to the point, all sorts of people magically appeared. No idea where they all came from. I'm very nervous getting even barely close to the edge, even when there is a railing, and there were no railings out on this point. A group from New Zealand was out there at the same time as I was and they were fearless. Anyway, after a bunch of great pictures, I made my way back along the trail, running into a ton of people on the way. There were about 20 cars at the trailhead when I got back there.

I then went to Cape Royal and Walhalla Overlook. At Cape Royal, there is an overlook called Angel's Point, which was quite scary getting out to, even with the railings. Thought: how the heck did those railings get installed? Whoever installed them must have been crazy. But agin, a lot of great pictures and then I drove over to Point Imperial. Very little walking required at there overlooks. I think I liked the perspective of the canyon the best from Point Imperial. After I was done with all the sightseeing, I made my way back to my cabin for a much needed shower and nap. I'm currently hanging out in the lodge waiting for dinner and then I'm going to call it an early night. Doesn't seem that there are the massive dinner delays tonight like there were last night.

I know that I said that I was going to walk into the canyons today and then stay on the rim tomorrow, but with the elevation up here, I wanted to stay on the rim today to give my body a little bit more time to adjust. Tomorrow, I'll be walking down into the canyon - not too far. I'm planning on going down to Supai Tunnel, which is 2 miles in. I'll take plenty of water and take my time. They say to plan to spend twice as much time coming back up as it takes to go down, so I'm planning an hour down and 2 hours back up. The walk back from Cape Final was definitely starting to get quite warm, so I'll try to get a bit of an early start tomorrow (shouldn't be too difficult since I am apparently incapable of sleeping in).

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