Grand Canyon Visit

Today we decided to take the drive up to the canyon and do some hiking and viewing.  We left fairly early as the drive is close to an hour.  We arrived just after 9am, which we soon discovered was a very good time to arrive.  There were no lines at the entrance gate and parking spaces were easy to find.  We settled on doing a portion of the Kaibab Trail, which will take you all the way down to the bottom of the canyon.  The portion we chose was about a mile long and had you descending something like 800 feet.  It is a very popular trail and traffic can get heavy on this narrow trail, which is also used by the mule rides.

Here is a picture as we start the hike down

The trail is fairly steep in places with loose dirt and gravel.  All the while we were descending we kept reminding ourselves that we had to go back up!!  Our plan was to stop at Ooh Aah point and then head back up.  As we were hiking Fran asked me if I thought the point would have a sign by it and my great reply was, “you will know you are there because you will go Ooh and Aah”. Joking as I was, actually I was right.  What a spectacular view!

and the verification (there was a sign)

This was our second trip to the canyon.  Our first was in 2002 but was just a quick stopover on our way back to Illinois from Christmas in California.  Here is a great picture from that first trip

We decided to call it a day around 1pm.  The park was getting much busier and there were long lines to get on the buses, plus we did not have another hike in us.  As we left the park we realized how nice it was for us to have come early in the morning.  The line to get into the park was backed up for nearly a mile and parking spaces at the visitor center and village were hard to come by.  We plan on coming back next week as we want to do the Hermits Rest trail.  Fortunately we have an annual pass for the National Parks so we do not have to pay to get into the park.  For a $60 investment, we have made our money back on the annual pass easily.  Just for the Grand Canyon it is $25 to get in, plus we have used it other parks along the way.