Vista Upon Vista

Friday, July 22:  We slept in a bit and had a lazy morning making breakfast, girls playing on wifi.  We caught the shuttle from the city Tusayan into the Park late morning.  It took us to the main visitor's center of the South Rim where we saw the 22 minute movie on the Grand Canyon - very informative and well done.  Then we walked out to Mather point to see the view.

We boarded the park shuttle and took it to Bright Angel Trailhead.  The Park amenities are wonderful.  There are four different shuttle routes you can take to various sets of viewpoints, lodges, visitor centers, cafes, gift shops, museums and other amenities.  We took the blue route out and stopped at Bright Angel Lodge where we had a very nice lunch. They had some of the old menus from long ago framed on the walls.  Back when eggs on toast was $0.30 and a cup of coffee was $0.10. We also checked in there for our mule ride on Saturday - they gave us lots of rules, weighed us and gave us our tickets.

After lunch we walked to Bright Angel Trailhead.  David hiked down this trail 30 years earlier with his brother Ed.  It is a full day's hike to the bottom (Colorado River). The NP does not recommend you hike all the way to the bottom and back in one day - best to stay over night or hike just part of the way down and back.  There was a notice there about a woman who died hiking this trail in 2004.  She had just previously ran the Boston Marathon - so obviously in very good shape. Her mistake was not having a map and enough food and water for the hike.  Her friend was rescued, she perished.  Needless to say, David and Ellie just went a few switchbacks down to get some good photos and came back.

We then took the red route shuttle bus.  It heads furthest west stopping at 8 different vistas out to a point called Hermit's Rest.  You can hike by foot from that point.  We chose to get out and visit 6 of the 8 vistas - each with a little different vista of the canyon - some with great views of the Colorado River.  It was hot - 95 in the sun, about 85 in the shade.  It was also fairly windy and there were a lot of people.  More than half are foreigners from Europe (predominantly German speaking, and quite a few French).  They tell us it is the exchange rate.  Every time we got back on a shuttle, chances were 50/50 you would be standing vs. sitting.

We hit a few more gift shops on our way out of the park and caught the shuttle back to the town of Tusayan about 7pm.  On our way out of the park the shuttle stopped so we could take pictures of the mule deer along the side of the road.