You are currently browsing the daily archive for May 26, 2009.
After a couple of much-needed showers and loads of laundry at the Motel6, we set off, refreshed, for the obligatory Grand Canyon visit. As usual, we had no reservations and were winging it, armed with the insider scoop provided by one of our ranger friends back at Carlsbad Caverns. We were told that there’s a little-known national forest ranger station just outside the Grand Canyon, and that if we stopped in there we’d get information on some good campsites outside the park. We found the station and can vouch for the fact that it’s not visited often – the ranger seemed quite shocked at our appearance and quickly gave us the info we asked for before rushing us off.
We headed on to the park and our pre-conceived notions about the Grand Canyon turned out to be true. It is very big. Grand, one might say. I’m sure you can find poetry that describes it better than we can, so we’ll leave it at that.
Condor-view self-portrait
After 3 days of backpacking, we decided that a 3-mile round trip would be the perfect length of hiking down into the canyon. And yeah, that was plenty. Especially since a mule had keeled over 3 miles down and had to be airlifted out, backing up all the hikers for a few hours.
Dude, watch your step!
Back at the top of the ridge, we arrived just in time for the ranger presentation on the almost extinct California condor which included a faux hand-feeding from the condor mommie puppet. And just after the presentation, as if right on cue, we saw a pair of condors hanging out just over da edge.
The baby condor at feeding time
All canyoned out, we headed out of the park to set up camp, where we slurped up some freeze-dried lasagne before heading off to see the Grand Canyon Imax movie (we rated it 3 stars by the Netflix standard rating system). When back at the tent we crashed again and dreamt of sugarplum fairies and blackjack tables.
