Our last day at the Grand Canyon was pretty low key. We planned on sleeping in, but we had a hard time with that for two reasons: 1) The sun comes up here at 5:00am because of crazy Arizona’s not observing Daylight Savings Time. 2) The ravens (the western version of a crow) at our campground are numerous and very vocal. They get going around 5:30am and will not be quiet. I know you’re not supposed to injure wildlife in the park, but I was pretty close to ripping his head off.
So, we got up at 7:00 and had left over Hamburger Helper and cereal for breakfast, which is a surprisingly good combination. We only had one thing in mind to do today and that was to ride our bikes up the Hermit’s Rest Road to see some different views of the canyon. I thin I know why it’s called the Hermit’s Rest Road. By the time you’ve been on it for 2 minutes biking straight uphill, you need a rest. The whole road is 7 miles, but we hadn’t planned on doing the whole thing. I will say that we cut it a little shorter than we had planned due to the uphill nature of the road. We ended up going about 2 miles up.
We stopped at a viewpoint called Hopi Point and it made us instantly glad we pushed a little further up the road. It was the best view of the canyon we had seen yet. You could almost see the whole canyon. We also saw three peregrine falcons playing with each other. They were so fast, it was like watching fighter jets diving and pulling up. They were too fast to get a picture but very cool.
We rode back down to the Bright Angel Lodge, and after sitting out a brief rain shower under a shelter, we had some lunch and sat in the lobby of the lodge to blog and get photos up.
We’re going to get a much needed shower tonight and get ready to leave tomorrow. We’re going to stop on the way out of the park to see the Watchtower at Desert View, then head to Bryce Canyon for national park number 2 on the trip. We probably won’t be able to blog again until Las Vegas which is Monday night, so check back in then.
~Andy & Kate
It looks like you guys are having a great time! Loving all the pictures! I am wishing that we rode the mules into the canyon. It has been 18 years since we hiked down into the canyon and I still remember how much I wanted to grab onto one of the mules tails for help as they were passing us on the way back UP the trail! Those people looked so comfortable. I wanted to cry!
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