Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year

Geoff and Sophie had a beautiful day for their hike along the South Kaibab trail today. Some early snow cleared to a brilliantly sunny day with no wind. The photos they took on their iPhones are awesome but reiterate all the reasons I was so anxious about them going! Their base fitness stood them in good stead and they did the estimated 6 hour round trip in 4 and were back before I'd had time to start looking for them.


Taine got to make his snowman and then we took the shuttle to the village and had lunch at the Yavapai cafeteria. I thought we'd be adventurous and walk the next leg to the Info Centre but white, snowy trees all look remarkably similar and I managed to get us lost for awhile. The air is pretty thin up here and I was puffing by the time we found our way back to the market bus stop. The views from Mathers Point were lovely and they have a very sturdy fence along the rim there :-)




We watched the last sunset of 2012 from the lodge area. The Grand Canyon is so immense it really is hard to believe it's real. The photos we took tonight look like we are standing against a fake background. I still can't get over how close the sheer drop into the canyon is from the lodge path. A couple of tourists asked me to take their photo on the path today and to my horror they backed all the way up until their heels were resting on the lip. I wanted to reach out and grab them back, just like I did with people who got too close to the edge of the subway platforms.


Tonight we ate dinner at the Bright Angel. It was delicious but as usual, far too much food. Unfortunately there were no deer lurking around the road like there were last night. We would have liked to stay outside and gaze at the bright stars in the canyon's unpolluted sky but at -15C it was just too cold so we retired to our room to try to stay awake till midnight.

Happy New Year everyone :-)


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