Grand Canyon: Sunrise with Herself

Since Herself still had jet lag, we arose early the next morning and took in the sunrise too. It was extremely misty, so the photography wasn't the greatest... It was also cold, near freezing.

After the sunrise tour, we had breakfast at El Tovar, the classic hotel located on the rim. We then spent the rest of the morning driving along the South Rim.

We ended up in Flagstaff, which we used as a base for seeing a few other things in northern Arizona.

Grand Canyon: Sunset with Herself

The day after my 8 days hiking down in the Big Ditch, I was joined by Herself. Of course, we first enjoyed a lovely (if chilly) sunset at the South Rim.

waiting on the rim for Herself

It was a nice sunset...


After the sunset, we enjoyed a dinner at the Arizona Room.

Grand Canyon: Day 8, the return

And on the 8th day, we worked. We got up early (4:30 AM wakeup call) in order to beat the heat. We left camp at 5:45. The first of us reached the rim around 9, the last at around 11:30. Yours Truly arrived around 10:30, near the back of the pack.

this part's not too steep

ooh, some sun!

the canyon's getting a bit narrow up here

not a lot of great options for going up here...

got over that bit, more to go...

the river's not really visible from up here...

... but it sometimes is

bear rests from the arduous uphill slog

vistas are looking more rim-like now

remember the guiding star from day 6?

ah, it wasn't that hard after all!

Grand Canyon: Day 7 (the day of "rest")

On the seventh day, we rested. Well, except for hiking about an hour down to the river from our camp, relaxing most of the day, and then hiking back with water for camp (collected from the side drainage between the river and where we camped) on our backs.

going down to the river

bear sunning by the river

This is the pour at the end of the drainage we camped in. No, we didn't climb down (or up) it.

A raft traverses the rapids. Note that they intentionally take the fun (i.e. more active) part of these rapids, which are not particularly dangerous.

A catamaran raft runs the rapids

a kayaker gets some air

This raft provided us with BEER

this guy is the operator of the above raft (note empty beer steins)

one last sunset in the canyon

A movie of a raft going down the rapids (NOTE: file is 40MB Quicktime movie, please try to limit downloads)