# Grand Canyon Vacation June 18-25



## cwhitney (Sep 9, 2014)

It has taken a while to sort through nearly 400 pictures and decide which ones to keep. I uploaded the pictures to photobucket as a set of public pictures. If you want to see all 156 of the pictures I uploaded, just click on the first one in this post and you can scroll through all of them. Having done that, I am now ready to tell the story of our Grand Canyon vacation. We packed up the camper and left our house around 7:00am on June 18.



We drove for about 13 hours, with stops for gas, meals, etc, and stopped at a KOA in Tucumcari, NM. After spending the night there, we hit the road again early in the morning and arrived at the Grand Canyon. After setting up the camper, we did a little sightseeing and hike down Grandview trail for about 15 minutes and back up again.



On day 3, we had time to do some more sightseeing and trail hiking. This time we went down Bright Angel trail for about 30 minutes and back up again. We picked this trail because it was the trail we would be using for our hike out of the Canyon in a few days.

Day 4 marked the beginning of our hike into the Grand Canyon. Nate, Nick, and I got to the South Kaibab trailhead and started our hike down the canyon around 5:00 am. The hike down totaled 7 miles and provided over 4700 feet of elevation change. Since there were no water stops on this trail, we had to pack our own water. Each of us carried about 1.5 gallons and we used most of it. It took us nearly 5 hours to make the hike down to Bright Angel Campground, but we took frequent breaks and did not get in a hurry. If we saw something we liked, we stopped to enjoy the view and take a picture. This picture shows the trail we hiked on and one of our first views of the Colorado River.



By the time we got to the bottom of the Canyon, it was really hot. There was a spring fed stream running by the campground, so we spent a lot of time soaking in the 50 degree water trying to keep cool. At one point during the afternoon, the temperature was over 140 in the sun and 120 in the shade. I took this picture a little while after the sun went past the Canyon wall, so the temperature on the sun thermometer was reading the same as the one in the shade.







With the hot temperatures (it only got down to about 90 for a low), we had trouble sleeping. We got up at 4:00, packed up, ate breakfast, and started our first day of hiking out of the Canyon. We started out moving slow due to our sore muscles, but picked up the pace as our muscles loosened up a bit. The hike for this day was about 4.7 miles with about 1300 feet of elevation change. We completed this leg of the journey in just over 4 hours. Here are a couple of pictures I took along the way.





It was a bit cooler at Indian Garden campground, so we took a 2 hour nap after we got our gear set up. We did a little hiking without our 40 pound packs, but spent most of the day resting up for the rest of the hike out. The wildlife had little fear of humans as we noticed when this deer came into our campsite in search of water.


----------



## cwhitney (Sep 9, 2014)

After a decent nightâ€™s sleep, we were back up at 4:00am to get our gear packed up. We got back on the trail around 5:00am. Our last day of hiking was 4.8 miles with about 3400 feet of elevation change. The good thing about this portion of the hike was that there were 2 places on the trail to refill our water supply so we did not have to carry as much. Even with the lighter packs, it was still the most challenging day of the 3 day hike. We took frequent breaks to catch our breath. We encountered more people as we got closer to the top. Many of them were stopping as often as we did to rest, even though they did not have 35 pound packs on their backs. It took us just over 5 hours to complete our hike out of the canyon.





After this hike, I need a new pair of hiking boots.



The next morning we started our drive home. We stopped at Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo. It is the 2nd largest canyon in the USA. We hiked a few trails that evening and the following morning before completing our drive back home.





We had a great time.


----------



## SwampRat (Jul 30, 2004)

Wow! What a trip!

Fantastic pics and great reporting.

Great job Mom and Dad!!!


----------



## gregtx (Apr 5, 2010)

Thanks for the read! Enjoyed the pics and descriptions. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## StinkBait (May 31, 2004)

Very nice read CW, thank you for sharing.


----------



## Daniel_Melcher (Jun 16, 2016)

Thanks for sharing your story. Wow. What an awesome trip...


----------



## 98aggie77566 (Jul 7, 2009)

Really cool!

Was just telling my wife this morning....I want to rent a car and drive to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Lake Mead/Hoover Dam, and then Vegas for a few days....fly home.

One of these days...


----------



## juan valdez (Jun 21, 2014)

Really cool adventure. I wish we had done something more like that but my wife is not outdoorsy at all. other than fishing. 
we did the helo tour of the GC whihc was cool but nothing like what you experienced. We did catch the GC at sunset the first day though which was quite the sight to see.

Thanks for sharing



98aggie77566 said:


> Really cool!
> 
> Was just telling my wife this morning....I want to rent a car and drive to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Lake Mead/Hoover Dam, and then Vegas for a few days....fly home.
> 
> One of these days...


we did this back in April i think it was, maybe march. flew to LA to visit some family and see the area. then drove to palm springs for the night/day. then to the grand canyon and from there on to sedona and finally phoenix/scottsdale.
original plan was to drive from San Antonio in my tundra so we could go through big bend, but then i realized it would be a long drive back from LA to here and dismissed that. so we did the rental car/fly there/back instead.

great trip and was cool to see that part of our country


----------



## erain12 (Nov 1, 2009)

Great vacation.
I did my canyon trip a bit differently though. Might offer you a different option next time. Day 1 hike to Phantom ranch spend night. Day 2 get picked up by prearranged commercial raft trip. Spend 3-6 days going down the bottom half of the canyon. Last day catch a shuttle back to your vehicle. It was the trip of a lifetime for me and I didn't have to hike back out ;-). The Grand Canyon looks great....even amazing in pictures, even better from the rim, but there is no substitute for being in the bottom looking up and all around. Purely Awesome!!!!!
Congrats again on your trip, you made a lifetime memory!


----------

