And if you don't care, you can just come back tomorrow...when the real posts will resume...
On the way out, we
There was a lunch stop in Amarillo so we could get the first of many fresh tortillas - and green-chile-cooked-pork - on the trip, then onward to Albuquerque for dinner at the Frontier.
Very tasty, cheap dinner complete with more green chiles. We wandered the Nob Hill section of Albuquerque and stopped in the next morning at the farmer's market - no chile powder or cumin just yet, however, so onward to Flagstaff after a stop at Earl's in Gallup.
Yes, food was a bit of a constant on the trip. It's the southwest, and, as Bowling for Soup says, "the Mexican food sucks north of [there] anyway".
From Albuquerquequeque, we headed on to Flagstaff to camp for a night in the hills outside town, in the shadown of Sunset Crater that thankfully hasn't erupted since around 1065. Good times in Flag as we really dug the climate and the whole vibe of the college town meshed with the hiker/biker groove.
--- warning, the next part is a fairly detailed summary of our Canyon hike...if you want less detail, skip down to when you see this kind of note again... ---
Camped the next night at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and set the alarm for 3:30am so we could be on the trail at first light (4:30am). We loaded up the packs and headed over a very windy rim of the Canyon and down the South Kaibab (click here for a well-done virtual hike)...
The Girl set off at a pace a little faster than mine, and I let her take the lead as the chilly winds blew us down from the 6000-ft-high South Rim down to the 2000-ft-high Colorado River in the Granite Gorge. By the first rest stop, our paces were about in step, and we'd been passed a couple of number of times by speedier hikers, and my right knee was starting to feel a bit pained. Luckily, I remembered to switch up which foot you step down with, and the pain disappeared pretty quickly.
By the second rest-stop (4.4 miles to Tip Off) it was about 8:00am, and the 60-degree temperatures we'd started the hike with were now up to about 90, and we each had forty or so pounds on our back. We were eager for any shade that we could find, and we had reversed our paces as I now set off in lead.
The trail is amazingly well marked, having been built from old miners' trails by the CCC in the 1930's, but the constant downward march can be hard on every part of your legs. After another mile or two, The Girl was lagging seriously behind, and I was stopping pretty frequently to make sure that she was still back there. As we rounded into the sun time and time again, she was flagging badly, and finally admitted such when we could see the first suspension bridge across the river.
She was talking about leaving her pack behind and coming back for it after she felt better, and she later admitted to me that she'd been getting dizzy and nauseous and had stopped sweating - in spite of the fact that we'd both headed over the Rim with about four liters of water and gatorade and plenty of snacks for the full hike.
We took more frequent breaks, and I kept trying to make sure she was okay, and once we made it across the bridge...
...she went another few hundred yards and set down to drop her pack. We were by then about half a mile from the campground, and she was clearly in a bad way. I picked up her pack and lead her into the campground, guiding her directly into the cold stream to regain her senses.
In all honesty, I knew she wasn't too far gone because she was still lucid, but she clearly was in no shape to do any more hiking that day - or as I was starting to understand, to complete the rest of the six-day rim-to-rim-and-back trip we had planned. So I left her in the chilly water of Bright Angel creek - the most wonderful part of the Bright Angel campground, honestly - and went to get things set for the day's and night's camping. It was, by that point, 10am, and the thermometer at the campgrounds was already registering triple digits. By mid-afternoon, the same thermometer - admittedly in the sun - was reading 130, and the one just behind the bulletin board in the shade was 110.
Good times.
Oh, and the water main bringing water to the campground from near the North Rim had broken the day before, so fresh water was being limited.
I'm glad The Girl had remembered to bring her Aqua Mira drops, because we spent the day drinking creek water and chilling our legs in the water.
It's admittedly, a little sparse at the bottom of the Canyon with about twenty-five camping sites - all filled for most of the summer - and Phantom Ranch with its canteen selling cold drinks and a bit of time under the swamp cooler, but it's an amazing place, a gorgeous, lush, green oasis in the middle of a Canyon that is amazingly hot all summer long.
After The Girl had recovered herself a bit, we went to speak to the rangers about modifying our trip, changing our reservation plans from five more days across (with three more camping nights) to one more night and a broken-up trip back to the South Rim. Once we explained that we hadn't been trying to do a rim-to-rim-and-back in a day (something that apparently crazy people do really attempt to do in one day - the ranger spoke of a man who knocked on his door at 2am the previous morning 3/4 of the way done with the 44-miles in 24-hours, rim-to-rim-and-back insanity), he helped us out by getting our reservations switched to Indian Garden for the next night meaning that the six days of hiking (7, 7, 7, 7, 7, and 9 miles each day) would become three days of hiking (7, 4.6, 4.5 miles, instead).
At the crack of dawn the next day, we set out again, headed this time up the Bright Angel trail (the same guy does a great virtual tour of this trail, too) toward Indian Garden. Most of the day's 4.5 miles was spent in shade as the deep Canyon doesn't get the full brunt of the sun until after we'd stopped hiking
for the day, and the trail crosses a small creek a half dozen times before the campground, giving us ample opportunity to dunk our hats and bandanas to cool off.
The girl and I got into Indian Garden sometime around 10am again - heading up always takes longer than heading down and much of the first part of the trail is nothing but beach sand - and looked around for a similar creek to the one at Bright Angel campground. The creek at Indian Garden, however, was fairly well dried up, and we had to find a way to entertain ourselves among the dry, still Canyon air - at least only up to about 95 degrees in the shade this time as we were partway back up to the South Rim.
The girl took a fitful nap, worked a few of her Sudokus, and read a bit. I started and finished a book (review forthcoming another day), worked some Sodokus, played solitaire, and won nine of our eleven hands of Gin.Time was passed, an early evening was turned in - the sun goes down in the Canyon around 8:30, but I was mostly sacked out around 7 or so, trying to get some shut eye in spite of stillness and heat.
Up before the crack of dawn again, we headed up the last four and a half miles to the South Rim (still following the virtual tour, of course - including amazing photo of the trail from above, a view we never got to see as we didn't head out to another vantage point once we crested the Rim again)
Started in shade again, but we quickly found the sun and headed up the longest, hardest set of switchbacks that I know of on in the Canyon (or anywhere else, though my experiences are somewhat limited). Once the sun hits, it beats down upon you, and the mules pass by kicking up the dust. It's a rough finish to the hike, but there are some impressive views and sights along the way, including a fairly close encounter (probably about thirty feet away) with a condor sitting along the ledge...
Apparently the California Condor was reintroduced into the Canyon a decade and a half ago. The site of the huge bird sitting there and - even more impressively - soaring in the final red rocked climb up the trail was a nice reward for all our hard work.
By the time we finally made it through the tunnel and back to the South Rim, we were whupped though our calves had finally loosened up. We had been doing the hiker shuffle our last couple of mornings before the legs loosened up.
Just before the tunnel, we managed to see an NPR reporter carrying a recorder and boom mike on a mule taping a story. No luck in finding the
We ambled our way back to the rental car and drove to Mather Campground for a warm shower ($2 for eight minutes - can't be beaten after the long hike), a visit to the gift shop, a stop for q-tips and ibuprofin at the general store, and a lunch of chicken pot pie and lemon cake (on my part).
--- Quick summary...Karlen didn't do well in the heat...we hiked down in one day and changed the six-day hike into a three day hike, taking two days to get back up to the South Rim... ---
Ten miles from the South Rim Village to the North Rim Lodge as the crow flies...twenty-one miles of hiking...or the route that we ended up taking that afternoon - 215 miles and five hours of driving around to see the North Rim which is amazingly gorgeous.
Along the way, we stopped off at Grandview Point...and Desert View...
...and saw the old Navajo Bridge, the only driveable crossing of the Colorado River - just down from Lee's Ferry - for hundreds of miles...
We hung out at the North Rim for a night, staying just outside the park at the Kaibab Lodge where we managed a phenomenal dinner of raindbow trout with grilled shrimp, maple glazed carrots, and cheese tortellini (I know, three days of granola bars, beef jerky, ramen, and instant spuds made me hungry), and the sunset from the back porch of the North Rim Lodge.
It's amazing how much different the North and South Rims feel, the North being so much less travelled, so much calmer, absolutely wonderful. If ever you get the chance to head out to the Canyon, make sure to get around and enjoy the North Rim. Well worth the extra drive.
Okay, quick hitters for the rest of the way homeward - 'cause it's late, and I'm about to run out of the day.
One night in Flagstaff where we realized that a town of 50K isn't quite as lively as we had previously imagined and where we got kind of annoyed that the hotel was going to charge an extra $50 a night on top of their weekend rate because the Pride in the Pines festival was in town...spent the last part of the evening in their library looking up places to stay and eat in Santa Fe...
Two nights and most of three days in Santa Fe...stayed at the St Francis a block or so off of the Plaza...pretty much just walked around for the few days and enjoyed the heck out of being clean and back in civilization with a real bed again...ate amazing food (Maria's NM Kitchen, Tortilla Flats, Railyard) and some decent food (Cafe Paris, Cafe Pasqual's, Zia's)...
Back to Albequirky to spend a night with The Girl's cousin and his reasonably new wife...
Back to Edmond where The Girl's aunt and uncle were in town this time...they took us down to see the Oklahoma City Federal Building memorial at sunset...
And thirteen final hours of driving back to the Queen City...
More for later...we listened to Middlesex, War of the Worlds, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union...
For now, though, I'm thinking that's long enough...
