Grand Canyon NP - June 25, 2016

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Start: Flagstaff, AZ

End: Grand Canyon NP, AZ

Driving towards the Grand Canyon, Justin and I turned past the last stop for a gas station before heading our way into the park, and I started running through my mental checklist to make sure we had everything we needed. Water. Food. Sunscreen. Camping gear. I figured with no way to get a meal other than making our own, and no way to get gas at the top of the park, we would be back down later that day or at least the day after to grab a nice meal or get more fuel before we left two days later. Never having been to the canyon park before, I didn’t realize all the amenities that would accompany the gorgeous views at the top of the 20-mile drive from “civilization” to the entrance of the park. About a minute after going through the park checkpoint, before we even saw the canyon, we saw a gas station. The first night we had guacamole and beer at a tavern. Needless to say, we were not lacking for water, fresh food, or bathrooms.

The expanse of the canyon itself is not something easy to describe, so I will leave it simply to say it is impressive. It seems hard to believe that the other side is not your mind playing tricks on you, but actually another edge of the canyon, miles away. On Saturday, we started by driving from Flagstaff, AZ, about an hour and a half away, to Desert View campground. When originally planning the trip, I had hoped to reserve a spot at one of the two park campgrounds, but the other, Mather Campgrounds, filled up completely about a month beforehand. Desert View is the only camping area on the south rim side that takes first come, first serve campers. I had called ahead and the park ranger suggested coming by at least 10 a.m. to snag a spot. The strange coincidence was that there was another couple staying at the same Airbnb as us in Flagstaff and they too were attempting to get a last minute spot at Desert View today. When we heard that, we were guessing our chances for getting a spot were maybe more competitive than we had imagined. As we pulled up into the campground though, we were happy to find that a decent number of the campsites were unoccupied, and we claimed a spot and worked on setting up our tent.

Afterwards, we drove to an area with a trailhead as well as a camping/grocery store/café, bought some firewood for later, and got ready to hike part of the rim trail.

The area we hiked was about 2 miles total in distance, but it took us about 3 hours as we were going at a slow pace, stopped to spend time at a geology museum, and listened to a 30 minute free ranger talk about the canyon and its formation. The views were really interesting. Justin didn’t have any trouble with the warm temperatures (upper 90s) and mostly sunny trail, but I am not used to a lot of strenuous exercise, so the climb could be difficult for me at parts. Justin slowed for me as I needed periodic stops to catch my breath, and drank a lot of water. There were lots of people passing by, so if you did have some kind of medical emergency, plenty of people would be around to help. We were also never more than a mile from a source of water or shelter.

The day ended with a cooked meal at a tavern there at the park that we ate on disposable plateware, as I heard a server telling a customer that the tavern was on a water shortage. I was thinking about that in connection to the fact that the majority of restrooms that we used at the park are flushing toilets, as opposed to vault toilets (simply a seat with a long way down to all the toilet waste). It does not seem necessary to me to have flushing toilets in so many places, dirtying up an enormous amount of water that could be used for other purposes at the park. They do have some sort of recycling system with the water used, but it is still an exorbitant amount of water being contaminated with human waste every day, just so visitors can have the luxury of flushing toilets. Even the toilets at our campground were flush toilets.

By the time we were driving back to the camp, the sun was about 30 minutes away from setting, so we decided to stop at one of the pull-offs to get a good view of the sunset over the canyon. It was neat to watch the sun sink lower, and the haze of the canyon turn different colors as well as the shadows change direction and shade. There were probably about 50 other people there at this particular lookout. When we got back to camp, the stars were numerous and bright, some of them even twinkling (not sure what causes that yet) as we wrapped up the day and slept.