Hiking the Grand Canyon

Now that I'm somewhat caught up to my present life I get to detail my adventures a little bit more..

I have this best friend, Aliina, whom I have had many incredible experiences with since my junior year of high school. We've road-tripped from Maryland to Wyoming, gone on a trip to Miami, gone to my family's house in Colorado a few times, and shared an amazing number of experiences traveling and exploring the world around us.

So this time, Aliina got a job in Spokane and needed a copilot for her drive from the Grand Canyon (where the position's training was) up to her new home, Spokane. On the 4th of July, I flew into Flagstaff. At which point I've got to tell a little story about our Grand Canyon portion of the trip. When I typed in my search to fly from "San Diego to the Grand Canyon" and I got results with a plane ticket, I was very excited that I could actually fly straight into the canyon, saving Aliina a drive and gosh the ticket was Cheap! Of course when Aliina told her friends that I was flying into the Canyon they were skeptical because there are very limited flights that go into the Canyon but we were both sure that the ticket I had purchased said it was ending in the Grand Canyon. Well turns out they had reason to question that I was actually flying into the Canyon as only helicopters land at that airport, so I ended up in Flagstaff and Aliina had to come and get me.

This put us at the North Rim of the Canyon at about 1pm and we had to make it down to the bottom of the Canyon for a rather expensive beef stew and, more importantly, to beat the setting sun. With elevation, the flu, and a long day working against me, we did the incredible hike down the canyon with Aliina encouraging me and my struggling body the whole way. I don't know if you've seen the canyon before but it is an UNFATHOMABLY beautiful part of our world and somewhere that makes one appreciate the vastness of the world we live in.

After a tough hike down (boy my knees hurt!) we enjoyed a delicious cafeteria-style dinner in the lodge and were the life of the table (seems most people were pretty tuckered out after the hike and didn't feel up to chatting). We chatted with a Californian mother and daughter and had a few good laughs as well as gave some advice as the daughter was beginning her hunt for the perfect college. Later that night we met with some of Aliina's coworkers to sit in the creek and soak our weary legs before we hit the sheets.

Thing about staying at the bottom of the Canyon is that you either camp or stay in a hut with (in our case) 10 other ladies. Because we got down there so late, we got the rickety top bunks above some grumpy older ladies. I tried to envision myself being rocked to sleep every time she moved rather than get annoyed, but no matter the effort neither of us got much sleep. So 4am came rather quickly the next day and after a few granola bars and a fruit cup we began the adventure back up the cliffs. It was a beautiful day and we were in the wonderful company of her friends so the 9 mile hike up 4,000feet actually seemed easier than the hike down the day before.

One thing that Aliina and I are good at is taking time to stop and observe the incredible places that we are wandering through and the Grand Canyon is a great place to just sit and look at. Especially in the late day and early morning, the red of the rocks is at its most vibrant shade so you can't help but view it as a grand painting. My favorite thing was to look at the trail below and see it zig-zagging its way down the incredible slopes we had to cross.

Once out of the canyon, we went straight to the ice cream parlor and ordered big root beer floats. Of course our stomaches didn't handle those too well, so a large group of us decided to go and get pizza before parting ways. While the pizza was less than enjoyable, my hunger made it's lack of resemblance of what I thought I ordered irrelevant.

Leaving the Canyon, we were on our way to Cedar City Utah in Aliina's tiny car (which of course was packed with her entire life at the time). Being the optimists we are, Aliina and I figured we could squeeze in one of her coworkers and to do so we completely unpacked the car (after that enormous hike) and ended up strapping three duffle bags to her roof using the straps from the duffle bags as bungee cords. Was it a good idea? Probably not our best. But let me tell you those bags stayed in place and three of us, plus aliina's life made it safely to Cedar.

The rest of the journey to Spokane is another story in itself which I will leave to my next posting.