The Grand Canyon

After hiking The Teton Crest Trail we drove to Yellowstone National Park for a day so we could rest our weary backs and feet, but by the end of the week we were rested and ready to hit the road again. Our next hiking trip is in the Grand Canyon, which is a hike we've done many times before, but we just can't resist hiking it one more time.

We always hike down the South Kaibab Trail.  It's a good choice for going down rather than up because it has no water or shade. It's also a little shorter than the Bright Angel Trail.  The trailhead is nice, with trees at the top, but those trees are only at the top.

You can see the trail winding down the canyon in the middle of this picture. The trail is rather steep, but then you are hiking down the Grand Canyon!

No, those aren't steps on the trail. They're actually water breaks, and there are a lot of them, spaced just far enough apart to make hiking more difficult.

Cedar Ridge is a good place to take a break. The mule trips stop here, and it's a 3 mile round trip hike from the South Rim to Cedar Ridge.  This is a good choice for a hike if you want to see a little of the Canyon below the rim, because you can go down and up in an afternoon without any problems. Just remember to take a lot of water with you!

The Grand Canyon is so beautiful. It's hard to hike without stopping to take pictures, but none of my pictures show the Canyon's true beauty.

Skeleton Point is three miles from the trailhead, and offers a 360° view of the Grand Canyon.

The trail is that ledge on the right.

The mules are coming! These crazy people rode the mules down the Bright Angel Trail and spent the night at Phantom Ranch. Now they have to ride up the South Kaibab Trail until they can get off those mules, and trust me, they're ready to get off those mules. I know, because that's how we got to the bottom of the Grand Canyon the first time we came here, and I'd never, ever do that again.  I trust my own feet more than I trust the mules.

You can see that we're getting down into the inner canyon.

Here come the pack mules. All the supplies for Phantom Ranch come down by mule, and they take the trash and mail back up. We talked to the mule skinners, and they told us that none of the mules with humans have fallen off the trail and into the canyon, but that's not the case with the pack mules. Yikes!

Ah, we can finally see the Colorado River. The trail keeps going and going, but at least now we can see the river.

This is the Black Bridge, and we have to cross this bridge at the bottom of the Canyon to get to the trail on the north side of the river, but it's still a long way down there to that bridge.

Wait a minute! What to my wondering eyes did appear but BIG HORN SHEEP! YES! Live, and in person, big horn sheep!

A ewe's gotta go when a ewe's gotta go. Even when some human came around the bend with her camera. Bob thinks this is a terrible picture, but I had to show that we finally saw big horn sheep. I took a nice little video when she ran past me and was close enough to touch, but I can't get that video on this blog.

We finally reached the black bridge, and crossed to the other side. Now we have to hike down the long, sandy trail to get to Phantom Ranch, and our home for the night.

When you hike to Phantom Ranch you check in here and then head to your dorm or cabin. All meals are also served here in the canteen, and the food is delicious. Breakfast is scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, peaches, and coffee. Dinner is worth staying for too. If you make reservations early enough you can have steak, salad, baked potatoes, corn, and chocolate cake with chocolate icing. If all the steaks are reserved you can have vegetarian hikers stew, but you still get the chocolate cake!  The stew is good, but not as good as steak after hiking all those miles.

Ah, we had a cabin. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and headed to the reservations desk to see if a cabin was available, and we were lucky. The usual procedure is to make reservations at least 11 months ahead of time. We've been here often, and we've had bunks in the dorms as well as cabins, and we definitely prefer having our own cabin.

The cabins are really cozy, and have air conditioning and heat. We were there in late September, and we needed the air conditioning this time, but it was much cooler than it's been on our previous visits.

We spent the night at Phantom Ranch and headed up the next morning. The trip tomorrow will be a much more difficult trip than our trip down.

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