Day 14 of 16—The Grand Canyon, first day

I mentioned in my last installment that I went online at 4am this morning after my drive. What I didn’t mention was it was only a 127 mile drive from Page, AZ leaving at 11:00pm to get to my last stop outside the Grand Canyon entrance, where we would gas up and switch drivers. My assignment was to drive as slow as possible so as not to get there before 4:30 am! Even at 30mph it was difficult to stretch a 2 hour drive into a 4.5 hour drive, and I found myself speeding up to 50mph a few times. I finally ran out of road, so pulled into the planned truckstop in Flagstaff at about 3:30am. While Dave took a shower there (free with fill up!) I crawled into bed, but it was too hot to sleep and there was wifi, so what the hay.

Woke up at the southern entrance of old Grand Canyon (south rim), where they have the old GC train station and a cafeteria in the lodge for a hot breakfast. I got up and joined the others for breakfast, and some of us needed to arrange our plane trip over the Grand Canyon. I had decided to go with them because it was affordable and a good way to see the Canyon if you don’t have time to hike all over. About ½ our group was hiking to the bottom tonight for a campout, but we still had to take care of the rest of the crew. Anyway the flight was arranged, and we were back at the bus after our 3 hour breakfast/wifi stop. It was time to go to our campsite!

There will be more pictures tomorrow when I have a chance to explore.

The group campsite we went to was Mather, about ¼ mile south of Marketplace Visitor Center. From there you can catch a shuttle to one of the Grand Canyon main visitor centers a mile or so north, and transfer to any number of free shuttles to see the park. We unloaded the bus completely and I took the bus to the bus parking at the visitor center, and spent some time looking at the exhibits. Then Dave texted me to go back to the bus and get the tent poles as a thunderstorm was threatening and we might need to set up the tarps. When I got back the hikers were preparing to leave for their overnight at the bottom of the canyon. Then it was time to help with dinner, and afterward we made our first campfire since leaving Yellowstone. I didn’t last long with 3 hours sleep the night before but woke up a 5:30am ready to work on my tournament coming up!