Thursday, July 19, 2012

Total Mileage: 4294
License Plate Total: 48

(Dinner in the dark)
Today was our full day at the Grand Canyon. Since we only had today we didn't hike down into the canyon since its an overnight hike and instead hiked part of the Southern Rim trail. The Grand Canyon has bus service to trails from various locations around the park so we took the Red Route down Hermits Road to Hopi Point and hiked .3 miles to Powell Point. Since it was so short and fast we decided to go for a longer hike along the Rim Trail on an unpaved path from Monument Creek Vista back to Powell Point where we could get the bus back to our campground.
The second hike was 3.4 miles long which took us around 2.5 hours to complete and offered amazing views of the inner canyon and the Colorado River. As the day went on the heat became more intense but its a good thing we were only along the rim because the tempertures in the inner canyon can be up to 30 degrees warmer than the rim. Mohave Point at the middle of the trail had the best views of the Colorado River. The river looked narrow from the rim which is around 6,000 feet above the canyon floor but it's actually as wide a football field is long. We were curious as to why river looks copper so Cassie and I did some investigating and we think that it's that color because there is silt suspended in the water and there have been have been forced floods of the river to "recreate a healthier eco-system" since it is dammed in many areas (http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=155777834, http://www.crateinc.com/run-wild-run-rivers/2011/08/why-is-the-little-colorado-river-turquoise-blue/).
We got back to the campground in the early evening and we weren't ready for dinner yet so we decided to do our laundry since we were both running out of clothes. The laundry took a bit longer than expected we ended up having to cook dinner in the dark by the light of a booklight and a citronella candle.


- Rachel


(Part of the Rim Trail path)


(Colorado River)

No comments:

Post a Comment