We woke up bright and late on Tuesday morning ready to enjoy the Grand Canyon. But first, Justin and Caroline showered while Becca and getI went to buy some bacon and eggs from the General Store. Cooking these were extremely exciting, because there is evidently nothing that bees in the Arizona desert like better than scrambled eggs. Breakfast therefore consisted half of eating and half of jumping up and waving furiously to scare away the bees. THe campsite was still awesome though, not the least of which because there were no bears and we didn't have to hide all food and hygiene items away in the trunk of the car.
We drove up to the main canyon lookout and parked our car. The Grand Canyon, was of course, gorgeous, but looking at it from the one angle got old pretty quick, even though we walked about a 3 mile loop to look at the different things on the South Rim. THis isn't to say it wasn't a beautiful day, and we did have visibility of like 90 miles in every direction. Still, I think that we were a little disappointed we couldn't do the mule ride (waiting list was already long, cost 150 bucks, had to have a bunch of desert gear ready, and we had to be there at like 6 15 in the morning. We ruled it out)
After lunch and Caroline buying a cactus to go with her baby redwood, we wandered back to the car and drove over to Desert View, at the eastern end of the canyon, where we climbed the watchtower, and people-watched all of the European and Japanese tourists. It was PACKED.
Looking to kill time, we wandered out to a little outcropping just east of the watchtower. It was here that disaster struck. Those of you who knew me growing up may have heard about the time in 4th grade when I dropped my camera into the emu cage at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and had to get a blind zookeeper to get it out for me. If you don't know the story, I just told you. Anyhow, I outdid myself today. Sitting down at the edge of the outcropping, my camera slipped out of my pocket and fell. into. the Grand Canyon. I dropped my camera into THE GRAND CANYON. UGH.
It could have been a lot worse I suppose. It only fell maybe 30 feet, and it was easy to scramble down and go get it, but the LCD was broken and it's out of commission for the rest of the trip. I saved the SD card though, so I still had all my pictures. Justin was really nice to offer me the use of his camera that he wasn't really using.
We drove back to the main area, and sat down on another edge, dangling our legs and watching the sunset. Justin and I were clearly undaunted by my earlier misadventure, and we walked down as far as we could go safely. Caroline took some pictures! We got spooked after I threw a rock over the edge and we didn't hear it hit the bottom. Eek.
Anyway, the sunset was really pretty despite the masses of tourists crowding us at the edge, and everyone clapped when the sun set. We came back to the campsite, cooked some couscous, ate some s'mores and went to sleep!
PS: The stars in National Parks are AMAZING.
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