An old trip report of mine part of HOW NOT TO DO IT on a 5 week mainly climbing road trip in the states some bits might help.
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Arriving late we found the Grand Canyon Hotels charged $200 per room luckily they were full so we had opted for a night in the car.
Clear skies at an altitude of almost 9000ft meant we woke to find 4mm of ice coating the windows & plastic inside the car that was parked in a convenient pizza hut parking lot.
Unfortunately Pizza Hut don’t do early starts so we quickly packed away the sleeping bags & crossed the road to Macdonald’s, the only place open.
We ordered coffee & a Mac Monster breakfast, despite thename it was small, greasy and not very filling but the coffee was good.
Dawn broke & we were first in line at the park entrance.
A couple of years ago Chuck who hails from St Louis had invested a hard earned $10 in a National Park Pass for Life deal which turned out to be a godsend as the normal entry price to any national park is $25 per car per entry. The bored kiosk Ranger did his speech, the first of a long day & allocated us our freebie handout which I normally throw away.
We quickly drove to the rim as the light was superb for photos & would not last long when we got back to the car we consulted the freebie deciding the best walk would be the Bright Angel Trail down to the river & possibly Phantom Ranch. The idea was that we would just have to play it by ear & see how far we got.
Now the ladies often get me into trouble & not long after we set off a couple of good looking athletic young gals overtook us, a little later we caught them up as one of them stopped for a personal break, the one on sentry duty stopped us and we found ourselves walking with them, they were locals & planned to go down the Bright Angel Trail along the river back up the Kabaib trail back to the rim.
They talked us into doing the same but as we did not have a map or local knowledge we decided to try & follow them. Our plan failed when they decided to stop for an extended siesta type lunch half way down the Bright Angel so we opted to keep going at least to the river.
Here we were a bit unsure of the layout of the Canyon so we found some shade & had a stop luckily I had put the freebie in my sac. I found a small sketch map showing the general layout of the trails, I was now able to suss out the where the Kabaib Trail started back up to the rim.
The one thing that the freebie did not tell us was that there is plenty of water on the Bright Angel but non on the Kebaib.
The walk had now been extended to about 18 miles with about 5500 ft of decent/ascent in hot conditions. Due to lack of water on the ascent I got myself into a bit of a state suffering from heat exhaustion having to sit down & rest every 50 yards on the latter stages.
Luckily when got to the top of the canyon people had dumped water bottles, somewere even full so I managed to get some water in me, thank god for litter. The second lucky stroke was that the shuttle bus stopped at the top of the trail and took us back to our car. The down side was that it did not go directly there & we had to suffer an hour of tourist lectures on the area from various busdrivers. I just hunched up in my seat shaking & feeling very ill, wishing the drivers would shut up.
Eventually we got back to the car got more water in me, as we drove back south to route 66 I soon recovered.
We stayed overnight in the town of Winslow, great littleplace and a bitter oasis of culture, well it got a mention in a song, the highlight being one of the wackiest diners we came across on the trip & a far cry from the MacDonalds earlier on in the day.
Well, Im a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
Its a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin down to take a look at me