The Grand (ish) Canyon

After my first taste of America's National Parks (Yosemite) I was very excited to be going to another one. The trip did not start well however. It was a 12 hour bus journey from LA to Flagstaff (a town about one and a half hours out of the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon) so i booked an overnight bus so i could save on a nights accomodation. I am starting to grow tired of long journeys on buses now, so this one seemed to drag, and it was a full bus so i was squashed in next to someone. I could live with this however, because i was going to the Grand Canyon right? That is until i arrived in Flagstaff and onpicking up my carry on luggage (my backpack) i found it to be soaking wet on the bottom. I opened it up and found that the water had got into my laptop, my laptop was knackered. But hey, i had it backed up on my external harddrive thanks to my very kind ex colleagues, and lets not forget i got the laptop free when i started an open university course. Also, i was about to have 3 days of hiking in the Grand Canyon right? On arrival at the hostel i inquired about the buses going to the Grand Canyon, bearing in mind i paid $12 return for a bus into Yosemite for the roughly the same distance you can imagine i was more than slightly perturbed to discover the buses were $60 return. On hearing this my plans changed as i was not happy about having to fork out that much money more than once. I decided to just spend on day in the Canyon instead. My patience was wearing thin, the weather was cold, and i was beginning to feel a little negative to say the least.

I decided i needed to have a computer of some sort because it has been very useful in planning my next destinations accomodation/buses/activities and of course for keeping in touch. So i headed off to find the cheapest one I could. This turned out to be $300 for a nice little 10.2" notebook. It is absolutely fine for what i need, and i also purchased a little waterproof case for it....just in case. So after managing to save so much cash on the way down the west coast i had now had to spend a large amount of it.

The next morning came round and i awoke some what pessimistic about my trip to the canyon especiallyafter having spoken to a chap who had driven there and back the day before on about $25 fuel (i paid $60 just in case you forgot!). On arrival at the Grand Canyon i walked the short distance to the rim of the canyon, past swarms of tourists and peered out. It was very cloudy, very windy, and pretty damn cold. My initial opinion was not great, i was not blown away, i was not awe inspired, i was in all honesty, quite nonplussed. I decided to walk the 3 miles along the rim passing a huge amount of other people all the way and numerous tourist shops and information centres. My interest heightened as i learnt more about the formation of the Canyon but i would say i was still not enthralled. After lunch however, my opinion changed.

I found that although they advised you not to hike in and out of the canyon in one day there were trails that went half way in and then back out. I decided this would be the way forward, so waded through the crowds to get to the trail head. It was a 6 mile round trip and in this short hike i completely changed my opinion. As soon as i began to hike down, the chilling wind immediately vanished, and the clouds that had previously covered the sky and shielded the sun moved to bathe both myself and the canyon in sunlight. The remaining few clouds left differing shadows on the rocks creating an eerie and ever changing landscape. The pathway was much less crowded, probably due to the steep uneven nature of the trail. This however, was what appealed to me. It was odd to be hiking down first and then back up, after having done the reverse everywhere up until here. The '3 mile rest house' was where the end of my trail down was, but i continued behind it and climbed right out to an outcrop where i placed myself down looking over the valley below. This was an incredibly stunning spot, which kept me mesmerised for a good 20 minutes. I had brought my binoculars with me a looked below at the different paths meandering through the valley below, occasionally spotting an elite few hiking back out. The hike out was not nearly as difficult as i had expected so managed the whole 6 miles in just over 2 hours. This frustrated me somewhat as i feel like i could have quite comfortably hiked all the way to the bottom and back in the day, but once more the constant warnings of death and worse were thrown about in their masses which put me off from attempting it. Unfortunately as i had decided to only have the one day here i didn't have the chance to go back and do it.

On reflection the trip to the Grand Canyon was good and I am glad i saw it, however, I will not be rushing to return there, and would probably only do it again if i could either camp there for a few nights, or hire a car to get me to the park.

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