Bright Angel Trail

The third day at the Grand Canyon we hiked down into the canyon itself on the Bright Angel Trail. It was gorgeous and so cool to get further and further down into the canyon. It was a really steep trail and no joke of a hike. Here is a shot from far away that shows the beginning of the trail and the cool hole in the rock that was carved. You'll see me hiking through there in a second.

Of course, Grover had to come with. People seemed to get such a kick out of him although one dude did say "I like your Elmo" - clearly suffering from some sort of Muppet Confusion Disorder.

It is so gorgeous down there, it's so amazing to climb down next to all the striations and see each layer of earth and rock. The temperature is supposed to get warmer as you go down but since we were in the shade the whole time, we didn't really experience that bonus, damnit.

There were two of these stone arches - kinda cool!

Just like the rim trail, there were some sketchy-heights moments and of course there are danger signs posted everywhere just to freak you out. I can't tell you the number of signs warning of risk of death from dehydration, starvation, falls, over-exertion, etc, etc, etc. So, make sure to enjoy yourself, yikes!

Resting about halfway down:

This tree was growing sideways and you hiked right underneath it, pretty amazing!

The funny thing is, heading down, you get kinda cocky thinking "this is a piece of cake"...DUDE! Heading back up is no joke - the thing is SUPER steep and you are definitely sucking wind on the way back up. They tell you to estimate it will take the triple the amount of time to get back up as it did to get down. It was about double for us, but still the workout of the century. Makes it pretty funny that we saw a family with a STROLLER and 3 toddlers heading down when we were climbing back up, I'm sure that wasn't a fun hike back for them.

More pics of the adventure:

Next up: the Warrens get back in the car for a huge ol' car ride! Again!