Exploring the Grand Canyon Day 3

To start with, today definitely made the list of the best 15 days in my life.  It almost certainly made the top 10.  And it is very very possible it's in the top 5.  It really was wonderful.

We woke up at 4AM.  We got up at 4:15.  We left at 4:40.  What can I say?  I'm not a morning person.  Anyways, we drove up to the canyon to see the sunrise.  Katie was especially excited about this (I was more excited about the sunset), and was a little disappointed at how much light was in the sky.  Sunrise was expected at about 5:15, perhaps we should have gotten there at 4:30.  Oh well.  We both still really enjoyed watching the sky change and seeing the sun come over the North Rim (we're on the South Rim).  We took photos and had some more zen time (we're into zen - there's been enough running/driving around on this trip).

After the sunrise we went to do another hike.  We were starting at 6:19 (I'm weird about times like that), so we thought we'd hike down till 7:20 or 7:30 and then have plenty of time to make our way back to the top.  Our hotel checkout time was for 11AM and we had no plans of accidentally paying for an extra day.  So we made our way carefully down (trying not to skid on the sand/gravel), and at 7:15 we were at the first stopping point.  We took a break and decided to start climbing back up.  (A little early, but a good break point.  Also, we figured it would be better to make it to the top happily than to hate ourselves 2/3 of the way up.)  We turned around and started going up.

Taking a little photo break along the trail

When we did our original time calculations we thought it would take about twice as long to get back to the top (original expected arrival time was 9:30).  But we got back to the top in about an hour!  Including the couple of breaks we took!  We were so proud of ourselves when we realized that.  Total distance: 3 miles, Elevation change top to bottom (and, surprise!, bottom to top): 1131 ft, Total time 2hr 3min.  Go team!

Gerr... We did it!

After that we were on an endorphin high from all the hiking.  We also had an hour extra time since we didn't take as long as expected to do the hike.  So we walked along the Rim Trail for a little ways (nothing too strenuous) and looked at a museum.

Then it was back to the car to checkout of the hotel we stayed in last night.  After that we grabbed lunch (at 10:30AM, it was weird) at McDonald's (we were both craving cheese burgers).  Finally we headed back to Flagstaff.  Since we did have an extra day (which is what we thought, we just thought the extra day was before the planned days, not after as it apparently is) we are spending it in the Grand Canyon (according to the Yellowstone-snow change of plans).  We checked back into the hotel and I immediately went to sleep.  Katie slept in the car on the way to Flagstaff, I hadn't and was pretty exhausted.  After my nap we made our plans for the rest of the day.

On the way back from watching the sunset yesterday we found a much better place to watch it from.  After we decided to use our extra day in Flagstaff we chose to watch the sunset again from this better vantage point.  We also wanted to do some star gazing (which we have an affinity for and think it's just plain cool).  With all that we went to the canyon later than yesterday (since we'd already seen the whole sunset we were ok with just seeing the ending, also we were adding in the star gazing).  We drove back to the canyon, got our spot and waited.  More zen time.  (I think this is possibly the least stressed I've been in at least a year, probably more. It's hard to freak out about not having a job when you're just taking some deep breaths and watching the sun set at the Grand Canyon.)  Eventually the sun set, but there was still too much light to see the stars.  And it was getting pretty cold. And we were tired from the day.  And we weren't sure what time the park closed.  So we headed back to Flagstaff.

Sunset and moon rise

One day when I'm rich and famous (or at least richer) I'm going to hike the canyon rim to rim.  I'm also going to own a telescope and look at the stars in open, flat land.  But for now, that was an amazingly awesome day.