Club Ed strikes again!

I really need Dad to send me some pics...these were from my cell phone, which amazingly worked for 85% of the time!

I dropped my kids off with Jeff's Mom, Cheryl (ummm, they also had their cousins Julie and Lexi over and I think they had an amazing time, and probably would have preferred that I didn't come back so soon) and my Dad and I drove up to the Grand Canyon.

We spent the night on Friday night at a hotel, then woke up in the morning at started hiking. We went with a pack of maybe 25 people that my friend Ed puts together every year to hike. We LOVE Ed! He's hilarious! This is my second time hiking the GC with 'Club Ed' and it's always awesome! I was particularly excited to have my Dad with me this time, as I grew up hiking with my dad on so many trails, I can't even begin to name them all.

here's my dorky self saying hi to my kids at the top of the trail. It was FREEZING at the top! We started at 7:30AM

We hiked the South Kaibab trail down...it was a little over 6 miles down to the Colorado River at the bottom of the Canyon. I saw NO scorpions {last time, we saw soo many} and I was annoyed with going down when I got to the bottom...and my legs were tired...ha ha, not a good sign! There was a sign on the way down the trail that said "Getting to the Bottom: optional, Getting to the top: Mandatory." Made me laugh. Anyways, the views were obviously 'grand' It is so beautiful in the Canyon, you can't even believe it: way better than the view from the top looking down, and way better than the view from the bottom looking up.

Anyway, we made it to the bottom at about 10:30AM, I think. We ate lunch and fiddled around for a half an hour waiting to see anyone from our group, then started hiking the Bright Angel Trail on the route back up at about 11AM The Bright Angel is 9 something miles. This is Dad and me at the bottom. Note his classic white Derbish...love it!

Anyway, it was about 55 degrees at the bottom, so nice for the hike back up which was fabulous until we had about 3 miles to go. I could just look up and see about 2 football fields of canyon stacked on top of each other and knew that we had to get all the way up there...and it never seemed to shrink. sigh. I guess I'm getting old, yikes: my bones were aching!

I loved it, I'd love to do it again...but I actually prefer a mountain...really, I'd rather get the hard part out of the way (going up) at the start, and finish with the down hill than to save the killer part for last. Regardless, I can't wait for next time!

Loved it Dad, thanks for coming down to do it with me!!!