Day 9: Grand Canyon (pics soon)

It's a short run from Williams to Grand Canyon, and we did it fairly quickly, arriving just before lunch time (we slept in). When we arrived and caught our first glimpse we didn't believe it. Surely, this wasn't it. This was a painting, a giant poster someone was holding up. It could not be real. But it was. The way the scale of it overwhelms the senses defy's description. The other side, so clear and massive, was five miles away! The different strata of rock, stretching back hundreds of millions of years back to the dawn of the Earth were incredibly well defined. We just stood.

Pretty soon, we decided that just looking from above wasn't going to be enough, we had to actually get down in there and see it from the inside. We walked to the visitors centre to look at the available hikes. We chose the shortest, not wanting to get into any trouble, a three hour round trip down the South Kaibab trail to Ooh Aah Point. Alex made sandwiches (I put them in the bags), we made sure we had enough water, and we set off around the rim to the trailhead.

It was a quick descent to begin with, with lots of switchbacks and stairs carved into the face of a giant cliff. By the looks on peoples faces coming back up, we knew that going down was the easy part. The view kept getting better and better, with different details and perspectives around every corner. This canyon never ended. Sometimes, below we could see just a sliver of blue. The raging Colorado river, 90 metres wide in places a major instigator of this landscape, was nothing but a speck. From little things, big things grow.

After about 45 minutes we arrived and sat on the side of the trail, which continued all the way down to the river, to eat our lunch. We could from some of the hungry eyes on us, that other people wished they had thought to bring sandwiches. They definitely hit the spot. A Raven was gliding around, doing loops and putting on a show for us as we ate. We finished and packed away our rubbish. After sitting for a while longer we started our ascent.

Alex struggled more than I did as we made our way back to the canyon, but it was still moderately hard slog. The biggest challenge was getting enough oxygen in. Being up over 5000 feet meant that the supply in the air was starting to get a bit thin. We slowly made our way back to the top of the canyon, which brought great joy to Alex, and decided to catch the free shuttle back to Mather Point, where Ruby was waiting. We are so glad we caught that shuttle, driven by the very nice Bill C. He slowed down when he saw some large Elk foraging by the road so that we could take some photos and have a look, they were huge and just right there. We saw about eight of them on the short trip back, and some Mule Deer, with the donkey-like ears. Unfortunately we didn't see a Mountain Lion, which Bill said would complete the set.

Absolutely buggered, we decided we didn't need to go very far, and drove to the Grand Canyon Cafe a mile or two away to get some dinner. Nice big, cheap portions. I had the Chilli, which was very nice, and Alex had the salmon. We were hungry. After dinner we drove to the trailer village next door, but it was full. Luckily, there was still a space or two available at such a late hour at the campground across the way. We fell asleep pretty quickly.