Monday, July 17th, 2023

Starting mileage: 9291, Distance travelled: 0

Miles hiked: 8

It was a slow starting morning but we got on the shuttle by 9:45am to head to the Grand Canyon visitor center on the eastern end of the South Rim tourist area. We arrived and got our passport stamp and stickers before heading to the Rim Trail. David captured a photo of an enormous 3D relief map along one wall of the visitors center. Sadly, both films were unavailable due to technical difficulties.

The temperature was pushing 100 and shade was sparse so we slathered on the sunscreen, donned our hats and hit the “trail” (paved walkway along the entire south rim of the canyon). We started our hike at the Mather Point Overlook, which was overrun with tourists but offered spectacular views.

After soaking in all the views and taking all the photos, we fled the mass of humanity to walk further along the Rim Trail, where crowds thinned out pretty quickly. We found a couple of spots to get a full family rim photo.

Every turn seemed to reveal another stunning viewpoint. We could also glimpse the Colorado River way down at the bottom of the inner canyon in a few spots.

We reached the Yavapai Geology Museum, got a reprieve from the unrelenting sun, then continued along the trail. Shortly after, we found an amazing outcropping where we could get panoramic photos.

We stopped for lunch on the only shaded benches we had seen, right at the point we would turn off the trail to go toward the Yavapai Lodge area for coffee, ice cream and groceries.

After taking the shuttle back to our hotel, stocked with supplies (and caffeine and sugar), we rested for a bit in the air conditioning during the hottest part of the day. The extreme heat warning issued for the inner canyon meant we had to be careful about our choices for hiking any of the interior trails. We decided to start a hike into the canyon on the Bright Angel Trail at 4pm when the temperature had started to decline. We hiked down to the 1.5 Mile Resthouse, which meant hiking back UP, of course. It took us just over 2 hours. We reached the top of the canyon soaked in sweat, dragging Laura who struggled for much of the uphill part. We were glad to have made a sensible choice about the distance.