Prairie Reflections: day two of our south western road trip

Sunday, June 12, 2016

day two of our south western road trip

Day two was spent at the Grand Canyon. To be honest, this was a place that I wanted to go but it wasn't very high on my list. People always would talk about it and I thought it was a bit over rated. Boy, was I wrong. The Grand Canyon is so breathtaking in person. Pictures do not do it justice. Not at all.

We took pictures up on the rim walk and then decided to hike the Bright Angel Trail down into the canyon. Before heading down, we read the signs about not overestimating your ability and that on average, they need to helicopter 300 people out of the canyon per year. We chuckled a bit at that, filled up our CamelBaks, and took off.

We were busy taking selfies and laughing and chatting as we made our way down; but then, we saw the first person come staggering up the trail. The man had taken his shirt off and was gleaming in sweat and dirt, not to mention heaving as he walked past us. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and Elizabeth whispered, "he must have went all the way down to the bottom". I nodded in agreement and we continued on, at a pretty good pace. This wasn't so bad!

And then a lady staggered by us. She would have fit the definition of 'exhausted' to a tee. She, too, was dusty and sweaty and if we hadn't moved out of her way, I think she would have stumbled right into us.

After seeing a few more people, looking very haggard, pass us on their way back up the trail, we decided it was probably a good idea to stop our descent and head back up. It was an excellent idea because going up was much, much harder than going down. I don't think we took one picture on the way back up as we slowly made our way up in the 100+ degree weather. Did I mention there was a severe heat warning issued?

After the Grand Canyon, we drove to Page, AZ and hiked (if you could call it a hike) to Horseshoe Bend.