Well, today at least is a relatively easy drive. We’re up at the crack of dawn – and on the road by 7:00. We make the Canyon before 9:00. Head straight for the visitor’s center and the bike rentals. We’re so early, the Bright Angel Bike guys aren’t even there yet. But that’s ok, because once they arrive, they give us the scoop (it’s the first nice day they’ve had – where you can’t see your breath or have to bundle up to ride! It snowed here the week before we arrived!), we get the first bikes and we’re on our way around 9:00. The bikes – the best decision we’ve made. It’s great riding through the Village on the greenway trail, nice and cool, not a person in sight. We swing by our hotel, the Maswick Inn, looks pretty cool! From there it’s an easy pedal (or walk) right to the turn off to Hermit’s Rest –where everyone else is riding that packed shuttle to the viewpoints, but we’re cruising on our bikes. Totally worth it!
The first view of the canyon – wow!!! It is more spectacular than you can imagine – which is what everyone has told us. We’ll let the pictures tell the story. Click here to go to the picture site.
So – we cycle. The first hill from the transfer point to the Trailview overlook is the killer – but it’s so worth it. We avoid the packed bus (which is packed with a HUGE group of Japanese tourists – so we are thanking our lucky stars at every outlook!), we get fresh air (the breeze is so cool and refreshing) and exercise. And the bike helmets don’t even look that dorky! Ha ha. So we take our time and meander up and around the main look out points, each one better/different than the last. It’s really just an amazing sight – hard to comprehend that water has done all this, made this vast and incredible landscape.
So we press on- there are many points where we don’t see another human being for 5, 10 even 20 minutes – just alone, riding our bikes through the rim trail stopping anywhere and everywhere for more picture opportunities. We make it all the way to Hermit’s Rest with tons of extra time. Bright Angel bikes aren’t coming to pick us up until 1, so we have over an hour to explore the “end” of the pedestrian trail and Hermit’s Rest.
I was a bit disappointed in the actual structure – I had over glorified from everything I read, so after about 10 minutes of wandering around the 1914 Mary Colter built rest area (originally built as a rest stop for Fred Harvey coach travelers who were ultimately headed to Hermit’s Camp), we decided to brave out a little bit of the Hermit’s Trail – which is marked expert on the maps.
Obviously we weren’t going down to the canyon floor which was a 5-7 hour trip, we just wanted to head done a little ways under the rim. It was a spectacular hike – even if we only did ½ hour. We met a few folks coming up from the floor – one couple had camped down there overnight. Pretty wild. The little trail was treacherous in some areas, and we finally turned around after snapping a ton of pix! Our big under the rim experience!
Back up top, the bike van finally came and deposited us back at our car around 1:30. We grabbed our picnic lunch (we’d stocked up in Santa Fe and had lunch for a couple of days), hit a bench near the visitor center and ate our ham, roast beef and cheese while enjoying the people watching. Next up – we head to the hotel. They let us check in (thank you!!!) and we dump our stuff, get organized, cooled off and decide to go walk the other side of the Rim trail from the Canyon Village to Yavapai point.
It’s an easy walk, paved all the way, with TONS’O people. While we may have been all alone on the Hermit’s Rest route – we’re not here. It’s amazing the number of people. We brave the crowds and just wander along, taking more and more pictures. There is a great “walk of ages” that the park is installing with all different types of rocks from different ages (it wasn’t complete – so there were lots of marble bases waiting for their rocks!) and lots to see – of course – it’s the Canyon! At one particular point near the Yavapai museum, we walked out near the edge and saw these 2 people WAY out on a huge boulder overlooking the canyon. Scary as all – and the girl had on FLIP FLOPS! No way, I couldn’t even watch! Ed snapped pix – which you can see here – we couldn’t believe that they could be so courageous – or dumb!
As we were heading back to the shuttle bus – we had a devastating experience. Pietro was missing! We were crushed! He had been riding in my pocket, loving the scenery, wishing he could go further into the canyon – when suddenly we looked down –and he was gone! We searched, and searched, and called his name. We asked everyone if they had seen him, but to no avail, he was gone. We knew he loved the canyon – but we had no idea he’d want to stay – without us. We were crushed. Here’s the last known picture of our little pal.
The first view of the canyon – wow!!! It is more spectacular than you can imagine – which is what everyone has told us. We’ll let the pictures tell the story. Click here to go to the picture site.
So – we cycle. The first hill from the transfer point to the Trailview overlook is the killer – but it’s so worth it. We avoid the packed bus (which is packed with a HUGE group of Japanese tourists – so we are thanking our lucky stars at every outlook!), we get fresh air (the breeze is so cool and refreshing) and exercise. And the bike helmets don’t even look that dorky! Ha ha. So we take our time and meander up and around the main look out points, each one better/different than the last. It’s really just an amazing sight – hard to comprehend that water has done all this, made this vast and incredible landscape.
So we press on- there are many points where we don’t see another human being for 5, 10 even 20 minutes – just alone, riding our bikes through the rim trail stopping anywhere and everywhere for more picture opportunities. We make it all the way to Hermit’s Rest with tons of extra time. Bright Angel bikes aren’t coming to pick us up until 1, so we have over an hour to explore the “end” of the pedestrian trail and Hermit’s Rest.
I was a bit disappointed in the actual structure – I had over glorified from everything I read, so after about 10 minutes of wandering around the 1914 Mary Colter built rest area (originally built as a rest stop for Fred Harvey coach travelers who were ultimately headed to Hermit’s Camp), we decided to brave out a little bit of the Hermit’s Trail – which is marked expert on the maps.
Obviously we weren’t going down to the canyon floor which was a 5-7 hour trip, we just wanted to head done a little ways under the rim. It was a spectacular hike – even if we only did ½ hour. We met a few folks coming up from the floor – one couple had camped down there overnight. Pretty wild. The little trail was treacherous in some areas, and we finally turned around after snapping a ton of pix! Our big under the rim experience!
Back up top, the bike van finally came and deposited us back at our car around 1:30. We grabbed our picnic lunch (we’d stocked up in Santa Fe and had lunch for a couple of days), hit a bench near the visitor center and ate our ham, roast beef and cheese while enjoying the people watching. Next up – we head to the hotel. They let us check in (thank you!!!) and we dump our stuff, get organized, cooled off and decide to go walk the other side of the Rim trail from the Canyon Village to Yavapai point.
It’s an easy walk, paved all the way, with TONS’O people. While we may have been all alone on the Hermit’s Rest route – we’re not here. It’s amazing the number of people. We brave the crowds and just wander along, taking more and more pictures. There is a great “walk of ages” that the park is installing with all different types of rocks from different ages (it wasn’t complete – so there were lots of marble bases waiting for their rocks!) and lots to see – of course – it’s the Canyon! At one particular point near the Yavapai museum, we walked out near the edge and saw these 2 people WAY out on a huge boulder overlooking the canyon. Scary as all – and the girl had on FLIP FLOPS! No way, I couldn’t even watch! Ed snapped pix – which you can see here – we couldn’t believe that they could be so courageous – or dumb!
As we were heading back to the shuttle bus – we had a devastating experience. Pietro was missing! We were crushed! He had been riding in my pocket, loving the scenery, wishing he could go further into the canyon – when suddenly we looked down –and he was gone! We searched, and searched, and called his name. We asked everyone if they had seen him, but to no avail, he was gone. We knew he loved the canyon – but we had no idea he’d want to stay – without us. We were crushed. Here’s the last known picture of our little pal.
Dejectedly we got back on the shuttle to the hotel. We cleaned up, tried to access the internet (ha – that’s a joke), then headed out to watch the sunset at Lipan point, supposedly the best place for a sunset view. Before we hit the road though, we stopped at the general store to just nose around and see what was there – and lo and behold – we found HooDoo. He was a poor lonely Bison sitting in the bin with the little foxes. All alone. No other Bison – or other animal his size – anywhere in the store. It was destiny. So, off we went with HooDoo safely in our backpack – no more pockets for mascots, that’s for sure.The drive to Lipan took about ½ an hour and probably would have been worth it if the clouds hadn’t have rolled in obscuring the sunset. Bummer. We stayed a couple minutes, the wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and we headed back to the hotel for dinner. Had a great hamburger (surprisingly inexpensive) and a couple of drinks at the “sports” bar, then headed back for an early night and big drive to the North Rim in the morning.
Check out all the pix here.
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