A bit of an American family vacation to the Grand Canyon with me, Steve, and Taylor. Our other 3 camp-mates cancelled out at the last minute. The ranger told us to tell you 3 that you are wimps, by the way ;).

We took a sweltering drive across the desert then had a nice night camping in Mather's Campground at the South Rim before hiking down to the Colorado River in the morning. We started out the night sleeping in hammocks, but got too cold around 2am and ran for the truck. "Cold" was a feeling we'd soon forget all about. Steve got a back country permit so we're packing it all in and spending 3 nights camping in the canyon. Yes, it's July and it's HOT. It was rarely under 100 degrees.

We woke up early to avoid the heat and caught the 4am shuttle with a few other brave souls to the South Kaibab Trailhead. It was magnificent walking down into the canyon before sunrise. As the sun came up it showed off the colors of the canyon walls. And brought the heat. Basically we hiked downhill for 5 1/2 hours in the heat and dust. Not much shade along this route and we were exhausted. I think we descended 4,780 feet in 6 1/2 miles! What a relief when we got to the Bright Angel Campground. We got a nice spot on the river, took our heavy packs off, and spent the rest of the day in the creek. We spent two days there, mostly in the creek, while the temperatures reached over 140 in the sun (the thermometer maxed out at 140) and about 118 in the shade. We found out later the official temp the day we left Bright Angel was 156! It's amazing how the body can acclimate to temperatures like that. We were very very hot, but not miserably so.

We had to pack everything in and out including trash, but they did have bathrooms with running water. They made us keep all of our food and trash in metal boxes to keep the critters out so we kept our box in the creek so all of our food wouldn't cook in that little oven of a box. We got up in the dark again (4 am) to begin the first part of our hike out of the canyon. Hiking in the bright moonlight was great and the sun rose around 5am. What a pretty hike. We like the Bright Angel Trail much better than Kaibab.Anyway, we went about 4 1/2 miles and rose 1320 feet to get to Indian Garden Campground. More relaxing in the shade in our hammocks and then a 3 mile sunset hike (aren't we sick of hiking yet?!) out to Plateau Point. Beautiful view of the canyon and Colorado River.

We love the campgrounds here. It's all quite casual, there are not too many people (how many people would torture themselves like this?!), nice campsites, etc. We saw tons of squirrels, deer, lizards, a hawk, and even a rattlesnake!Up again at 4am to climb 3060 feet over 4 1/2 miles. This one was pretty tough too but the early morning start made all the difference. On our other days hiking we would see almost nobody, but this trail was different. Lots of people take day hikes down from the rim so as we got closer to the top we would pass all kinds of fresh and clean and energetic looking people. We were not any of these things. Thank goodness that this trail had 2 water stations along the way. We made great time of 4 hours and were THRILLED when we got to the top. We conquered the canyon and had a good time doing it.