Notes
We hiked to the 3 Mile Rest House along the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon. This was my first trip to the Grand Canyon and I was amazed at the size of the Canyon. We entered the park and stopped off at the "first views of the Canyon" rest stop. I read Bill Bryson's "A Walk In The Woods" on the flight to Sedona and his statements regarding how most tourists get out of their car, walk a little, and get back into their car seemed so appropriate. The first rest stop was very crowded and I was worried that the trail would be the same. On a side note, I was surprised at the amount of foreign tourists.
We left the first rest stop and drove to the visitors center where the parking lot was full. Instead of parking there and talking a shuttle bus over to the trailhead, we just decided to drive to the trailhead area. The crowds here weren't as big as at the first couple stops, which I liked. The trailhead was a little ways from our car but easy to find, despite some construction around the area.
Going down the trail there was a fair bit of traffic which was expected. We ended up hiking behind a couple that was going at a pretty good pace. Although we could have easily gone past them, we stayed behind them to avoid any potential embarrassment if we somehow slowed down. At the 1.5 Mile Rest House, the lady commented on my Detroit Tigers hat I was wearing. She said that she grew up in Bloomfield Hills, which is the city next to where I grew up. We talked about Michigan and Minneapolis and she mentioned she knew some guys who went to my high school (although they graduated much earlier than I did). We continued to follow them down to the 3 Mile Rest House and semi-out-of-the-blue the man commented that they got married in Michigan. I asked him where and he said at OLCC in 2005, which is where and when I worked as a bartender!
We saw saw a fair bit of wildlife including a bunch of lizards, birds, and Katie's nemeses, squirrels. While at the 3 Mile Rest House, there were a pair of squirrels would come up right next to you to investigate the food you had. I thought they were cute (although one squirrel had one eye) and this was pretty cool, but Katie was not a fan of the little rodents.
On the way down we had passed a group of 3 adults and 1 heavyset kid. One adult was a lot further down than the other 3 and when she got down she cracked open a beer...apparently to celebrate her accomplishment of getting to the bottom? The group left the 3 Mile Rest House a little before we did to head back up. We caught up to them soon after leaving the rest house and the lady who celebrated was pouring out the rest of her beers on the trail. When we passed them, the kid was walking about 0.05 miles per hour and complaining how tired he was. It truly was a sight to see. After getting on the next switchback, we saw them scaling the side of the Canyon trying to take shortcuts on much stepper terrain. Throughout the rest of the trip, it was an on-going joke asking if we thought the kid had made it out of the Canyon yet.
There is an option for tourists to take mules down the Canyon and we saw a lot of evidence of this fact. While we were talking about mules and approaching a turn in the trail, a large animal came from around the turn. We quickly commented "oh, and there one is" (referring to a mule), but quickly noticed that it was a deer about 20 feet in front of us. The deer stopped on the trail for a couple seconds and then bounded down the side of the hill and into the trees and bushes. We tried to look over the side of the trail to see where it was going, but didn't have any luck in spotting it again. It was a pretty exciting moment.
The rest of the hike up the trail wasn't too difficult. By the time we had made it halfway back up, the sun had descended in the sky and it was blocked by the Canyon's rim. This shade made the hike up very pleasant. We got back to the rim at about 5 PM and debated whether or not to stay to see the sunset. It was very cloudy and we couldn't think of things to to pass the 2 hours until the sun set. Not to mention we had a 2 hour drive back to Sedona. We left the park and while we were driving out of the park, we noticed a group of elk in the woods just off the road. It was neat because no one else either noticed them or cared so we were the only ones to stop and take pictures.
Rim Temperature: 75 F
Thermometer at 3 Mile Rest House: 90 F
Manually edited distances to account for inaccuracy in GPS data due to the Canyon walls.