Livingston's Way Out West: Day 5-6 The Grand Canyon

The Hopi Indians Ceremonial Dancers

The Grand Canyon was a great piece of LWOW! This post is kind of long—we did so much yesterday, so I’m going to break the post up into a few different topics:

The Grand Canyon: Close Encounters of the Elk Kind

On Monday night, we arrived at the Grand Canyon after a long and hot drive from Moab, UT. Thankfully, our van made the trip just fine (odometer is reading 155,931 miles now!) but we are ready for an oil change and new windshield wiper blades and possibly new tires when we get to L.A. Oh! And a CAR WASH is in order ASAP. Every place we’ve traveled has had the sandiest, dirtiest, non-grass/non-paved roads I’ve ever been on. If somebody doesn’t write “WASH ME” on the back at some point soon, I’ll be shocked.

As soon as we got to the park and paid our $25 entrance fee, we started looking for a view of the canyon and found one almost right away. It took our breath away! I tried to take pictures of the canyon the whole time we were there and none of them come close to showcasing what it looks like in person.

Once we entered the park, we had a 20 mile drive to our campsite and the main village and of course, Will had to go to the bathroom BAD (REALLY REALLY BAD, mom!). We eventually found a spot with a little port-o-potty and he hopped out to go and started running, but suddenly came to a complete stop when we spotted a huge elk standing right behind the restroom. This thing had a rack of antlers like something you’d mount over a fireplace at a lodge in Montana. Its body was as big as a horse and the ranger later told us they weigh about 1000 pounds. I believe it! That thing was a beast!

We wanted to make it to the canyon for sunset, but had such a small amount of daylight left that we had to use it to set up our campsite. There is no grass there—the ground is just dusty dirt and so everything we have (including our own bodies) is covered in a film of dirt. We must officially be the dirtiest people to ever roll into Los Angeles (on our way there now!). We feel a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies….

Back to the Grand Canyon: After our encounter with the elk on our way in, we had one nervous little dude (Will, age 5) on our hands and he refused to camp with us. It took some coercing and promises to spray Elkie with bear spray if it tried to attack him, but we finally got Will to sleep in the tent that night. However, we soon realized that our initial encounter with Elkie at the restroom wasn’t anything that special. Those things are everywhere! 24 hours later, Elkie was hanging right by our tent for a few hours. The kids were nervous as anything, but the guy could have cared less about us. He just wanted to eat the leaves and grass from around our campsite. He spent the night pretty close to us and was up an at ‘em early this morning. I guess if you’re 1000 pounds and all you ate was salad, you’d have to eat all day too from early in the morning to late at night. I counted 12 points on Elkie—again: MASSIVE beast. We saw quite a few Elkettes and their babies and I honestly would be more afraid of their protective stances than I was of Elkie who just wanted our leaves.

Elkie was taking a little rest next to our tent. He was waiting on us to get back from our evening hike.

Elkie was up early this morning eating some more grass and leaves. His favorite! He slept near our campsite last night and was up around 5:30 a.m. to start his daily munch.

Hiking in the Canyon

At the top of Bright Angel trail before we started down into the canyon. We look so happy and not sweaty! That was soon about to change.

After our hikes in Vail the other day with some unwilling participants, we were a little nervous about hiking into the Grand Canyon (GC) with heat advisories and tired children, but knew we must do it! Armed with 32 oz of Gatorade and 20 oz of water per hiker, we decided to try the Bright Angel Trail. You can take it all the way to the base of the GC (ha!) or just travel as far down as you would like. We got there early (around 8:00 am) to beat the heat and made it down almost a mile before I just had this feeling that we should turn around. We were aiming to make it down to the 1.5 mile point, but close to 1 mile, I just noticed that the people who were passing us on the way back up looked ROUGH! It was getting hotter and hotter and I knew it was going to take twice as long to get up as it did to get down, so we turned around.

As far as the danger factor goes, it made me pretty nervous because it’s not like there’s a guard rail or anything like that! There are a lot of drop offs straight down the side of the canyon and if you will remember, we had a very active 5 year old with us who often doesn’t have an appropriate sense of fear. Maddy was nervous during the hike as well, so one adult had Will by the hand and kept him on the inside of the canyon trail and the other adult would have Maddy positioned in the same way. This trail was packed with hikers and we passed (or they passed us) several packs of mules taking people and luggage down to the base. (Which, let me tell you something: I don’t think I would ride down the GC on a mule if you paid me $1,000,000. Talk about scary!!! I kept seeing them slip and they’re all tied up together in a long train—just makes me think that your whole group could go over the edge like dominoes!)

We did one more hike in the late afternoon on the South Kaibab trail. We hiked down one mile to the “Ooh Ahh Point” overlook (I love that name! Cracks me up because that’s exactly what you say when you get to the overlook: “Ooooh!!! Aaaaah!”) The kids did awesome on this hike because the sky was overcast and it wasn’t crowded at all. We maybe passed 3 other groups or families of hikers the whole time. It was beyond peaceful and quiet and we have been able to have some great talks with the kids during these hikes. I am loving the whole aspect of being away from home and all our responsibilities and having our only purpose to just be spending time with each other. It was my favorite part of the day, by far. The kids totally rocked this hike! (and yes, our legs feel like jell-o today).

1 mile down into the canyon at the Ooh Aah Lookout point

Fun Fact: The GC has around 5,000,000 visitors each year. Only 1% of these visitors ever get off the rim of the canyon and hike down any distance at all. WHAT?!? Can’t believe you would go just to enjoy the view! My favorite part was getting down in the canyon and really experiencing it and living it.

Junior Ranger William Livingston: Report for Duty!

Will had a fabulous day at the GC. He went through the Junior Ranger Program at the park which involved him going through a few Ranger talks/programs geared toward children and then he had to do a scavenger hunt and draw some pictures of the Canyon and things he saw an observed. Once he completed the requisite activities, he took his booklet to a ranger and she “swore him in” as a junior ranger. He took the whole process VERY seriously and is now on such a power trip that I’m surprised his head could fit in our tent last night. He tells everybody we encounter that he is a Junior Ranger and said he is in charge of protecting all of us now. He wore his badge the rest of the day and only took it off to sleep before putting it back on as soon as he woke up this morning. I may have caught him kissing it a few times too…. Here are a few pictures of his day: