We were still on Canyon time the day after the trip, so we were both awake at about 5:30am. Decided to go on out and catch the sunrise, which was nice. Most of the tourists were still asleep, so it was quiet. Once it was up, we had some hot chocolate before heading back to the room and deciding to go back to bed for a bit. The temperature difference between the bottom of the Canyon and the rim is astounding. It was always hot down below, but mornings and evenings at the rim were cold. Anyhow, in the early afternoon, our friends Megan and Bryan showed up at the Canyon. Clouds were moving in and about an hour after they arrived, it started to rain. It was kind of neat. We stayed at the Canyon till late afternoon catching out different vantage points and then started towards Flagstaff. In Flagstaff, we walked around a bit--cute, small town with tons of outdoors stores--and then went to dinner at Beaver Creek Brewery, which had excellent wood oven pizzas. We left as they were closing up shop and went to our hotel where we promptly hit the sack.
The next morning we met some friends of Megan's at La Bellavia--a small breakfast place popular with the locals. I had a standard eggs, potatoes, and toast, but Megan was adventurous and tried their speciality, a Swedish pancake, which was basically a pancake made out of oatmeal. It was ridiculously huge--two inches thick and the size of a dinner plate. And to think you can order a stack of three! After breakfast, we headed to the Lava River Cave on the outskirts of town. I was expecting it to be like the lava tubes we'd wandered through in Volcano but it wasn't nearly as smooth and was a bit longer at 3/4 mile. Luckily we had our headlamps and jackets as it was also pitchblack and cold (in the 30s). It was neat, but my favorite part of it all was the road that led back to it. It was a little gravel road bordered with Ponderosa pines and aspens under which a carpet of red, yellow, and purple wildflowers grew. It was gorgeous. And it smelled amazing.
By that afternoon, we were on the outskirts of Sedona at Slide Rock. Slide Rock is a natural waterpark, where you slide in rushes of water down natural rock slides. It was really fun. A stop at Dairy Queen and few more miles of driving later, and we were in Sedona, which was at once both strikingly beautiful and distressingly tacky. The red rocks were gorgeous and there were some great art galleries, but there were also terribly kitschy souvenir stores and such. The success of the town was spoiling it. But we headed up to the airport vortex (nom I didn't feel the supposed spiritual power of the place), where we were treated to a fabulous sunset. The sky was full of huge clouds which turned shades of orange and pink as the sun descended. Rain moved in as it got dark, and we set our sights on Phoenix. Around 9:00pm, we were pulling into Megan and Bryan's driveway.
We spent the next three days hanging out with Megan and Bryan as they showed us around their temporary hometown. We visited the gallery where Megan works along with a few of her other favorites. We met some of their friends at a cookout at their house. And we hiked South Mountain with Bryan so that I could see some big cacti.
On Monday, which was Jeff's 25th birthday, we went out to breakfast, where we were given a free dessert. (We just wanted a candle to stick in his breakfast, but we got a brownie too.) Then it was off to the airport and a flight back to DC. I don't think we could have had a better trip. We had quite the adventure in the Grand Canyon and then we got to spend a few fun days with friends. It was perfect.
And here are a few pictures from the post-Grand Canyon part of the trip. Enjoy!
5 comments:
Sounds like an awesome trip. And after the hikes we took this summer I wasn't sure if you could make it 8+ miles out of the canyon...but sure enough you did. I'll make it back to the Grand Canyon some day...but until then its still just an old rock...hahah. Glad you had a great time.
I think all of the hiking paid off. We were able to keep up a good pace, only stopping after a full hour of walking, and shockingly we weren't even sore the next day!
Now you need to bike 100 miles and I'll hike out of the grand canyon--just so we can figure out which one is more strenuous.
The "bike a century v hike out the grand canyon which one is harder" question was the topic of choice at one of the stops on my bike ride this weekend. Did you ever get mentally fatigued? My body was in good shape, but around mile 78 my mind just could not figure out what the hell i was still doing on my bike(64 miles was my previous long). This was followed by Rhys and I breaking out into the American Gladiators theme song and me then doing 10 good minutes of a "best-of Louis Black" routine. The mind does weird things when it fizzles out with 25 miles still to go(my century was actually 102 miles). I made it, though, and now I'm a proud century club member.
So yeah, you bike and I hike, and we will have an answer. Not all centuries are created equal, but 100 miles is 100 miles.
Yeah, we definitely hit that mental wall towards the end of the hike out. At one point, probably about 1.5 miles from the top, I started singing "She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes," and Jeff would then add the extra "When she comes". I think we were cracking up a little. But we made it.
And so did you. I'd like to ride a century. We had originally thought of aiming for it this summer, but we didn't get to spend much time on our bikes when Greg was here. Did you have fun?
Don't blame Greg for the lack bike riding. Haha.
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