The Southwest trip last week was
amazing. Without further ado,
the photographs.
Drove up north to Maryland that Friday afternoon and made pretty good time; the Wilson Bridge was a bit slow, but that's nothing new. Met m'girl in Silver Spring for dinner at
Lebanese Taverna and then barely enough sleep to get up the next morning at 5:30 to catch the flight to Albuquerque. Helen met me at the airport and we proceeded to what is evidently a fixture in town,
the Frontier; split a gigantic smothered green chile burrito, a cinnamon roll the size of your head, and tasty fresh-squeezed OJ. Then on to her folks' house, where we picked up her dog and dayhiked the last couple thousand feet of the
Sandia crest. Fun times. The next day we hit up
Tentrocks for another dayhike and rounded things out with the
Georgia O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe before heading back home and figuring out logistics for the Grand Canyon trip.
We were shooting for a 9am out-the-door time for heading to the canyon. Made it by 9:30, so we called it successful enough. We decided to take a less-travelled route on smaller roads north from the AZ state line to the park; this ended up taking us through a few Indian reservations and included a short side trip to
Window Rock, seat of the Navajo government. It was pretty cool to do 80mph on a non-divided highway, with closing speeds against other vehicles of 150-160mph at a distance of four or five feet... and by "pretty cool," I mean "I have found a new appreciation for high-speed driving on divided highways." Got to the canyon with plenty of daylight left... so we hung out on the edge to watch some of the sunset and then turned in early.
Tuesday was the most brutal day of hiking, even though it was all downhill.
Seven point one miles of suffering. More switchbacks than I care to remember. Very little shade. No water available on the trail, so we had to start full and heavy. If I do this one again it'll be mostly over before the sun comes up. Hiking poles helped out a lot here, but it's a week later and my calves still haven't forgiven me. Fortunately, the
campground that night was gorgeous, shaded, and next to an awesome creek wherein one could wash tired feets. Oh yeah, and we were
inside the grand canyon. That helped too.
Wednesday we rolled from Bright Angel campground to
Indian Gardens - a relatively easy hike of five miles or so. It helped that the bottom of the canyon is in a good bit of shade for most of the morning. I had decided the hiking poles were more trouble than they're worth for uphill hiking, so Helen nabbed and used 'em for the rest of the trip... it worked out well. We rested a bit more frequently also; it made a big difference. Our last rest spot, actually, was just around a corner from the campsite itself. Uhm, oops. At least we got in thoroughly refreshed rather than panting and dragging ourselves. Lots of trees at Indian Gardens - nice big shady ones, and another creek, and our campsite this time even came with a sort of mini pavilion over the picnic table. Yes, our campsites had picnic tables. The National Park service sure does try to make sure you get your money's worth out of those permits; it was the most pleasant backpacking I've ever done. We didn't even have to pack out our toilet paper - the composting toilets had their own. Good stuff. Made friends with a lady hiking solo who ended up giving us her deck of cards, which was very nice of her, especially considering our next day was...
Thursday, a nice slack rest day, in which we would camp at the same site. We were PSYCHED at the idea of dayhiking around without backpacks. Woke up nice and late (so, like, 7:30 or 8am) and prepared breakfast (cheddar grits an' grapefruit! Packing a heavy grapefruit and hiking the Grand Canyon defines suffering, but it tasted good). We headed out to Pipe Spring after breakfast; we're reasonably sure we got there, but the spring wasn't springin' so it was dry as a bone. We had some lunch under a nice shady ledge and watched a caterpillar fall repeatedly off of rocks he was tryin' to climb before he made it over to the patch of delicious green grass on the other side. There we were, in the biggest hole in the ground the world has ever known, and we're getting entertainment from the antics of a fuzzy black caterpillar. Good times. Hiked back, ate lunch, dozed, played some cards with our ambitious neighbors from the next campsite over (who hiked a LOT more than we did and lost tons of weight in training for their trip - good job, y'all!). We decided to head out to Plateau Point for the sunset and dinner; it's supposed to be the point from which you can see the most of the Canyon. Well, it was windy, and you sure could see an awful long way, but it wasn't quite as pretty at sunset as we'd've hoped. No big thing. It was still great, and dinner that night was prepared out on the exposed face of the point, so it was fun to eat surrounded by nothing but sheer walls and aerobatic swallows. By the way, three cheers for that little eight-dollar alcohol stove I got on eBay. An ounce and a half of alcohol burned two cups of water to a boil in ten minutes in that thing, and it weighed about as much as a checkbook. R'
spect.
By
Friday we had realized that hiking in the sun is far less fun than hiking in the shade, so we were out of the campsite by 5:45am and headed up the trail for the rim. 4.5mi, potable water every one and a half miles, lots of shade, a nice gradual ascent - I was so damn chipper and cheerful that Helen was unloading her pack into mine to try to get me to shut up and calm down. It did no good. A smile greeted every incredulous dayhiker on their way down. "You two are coming back up? This fast? With packs?! omg!" ...was the common reaction. It reminded me of
being the robot in the 24-hour race at Conyers back in '04 - you're treated like some kinda hero. It was fun. Made it to the top by 9am, weighed our packs (each fully ten pounds lighter than when we started - peace out, bananas and grapefruit), took showers at the coin-op facility near our first night's campground, pointed the car towards Flagstaff and took off. Mild highlights of our trip home include discovering we'd left the planned lunch (ramen and canned chicken) at Helen's house, so once we got to Petrified Forest - where we'd planned to cook and eat it - we got back in the car and burned rubber to the nearest Subway. Mmmm, club sandwich. Painted desert was highly pretty. Flagstaff is a groovin' little town that I'd like to see more of someday. I-40 between Flagstaff and Albuquerque is a mess of casino advertisements, pretty horizons, trucks that take six miles to pass one another, and variable cell phone reception. Made it back to her house in time for dinner, which was superb; grilled marinated fishes with more salad than I could eat and whipped cauliflower that resembled mashed potatoes but with tastier, uh, taste.
Saturday was a blur. Wake up, pack UPS box to send equipment home, drop it off at UPS store for the home-goin', hit up grocery stores for Southwest-style foodin' (I have green chile in my freezer!!), hike some more at
Petroglyph national monument, drop me off at the airport... get my long-awaited banana split, fly to Denver, get postponed for three hours while they figure out what to do with a plane that got severely overfilled with that blue liquid in the lavatory, deplane, replane a different one, get to BWI two hours and change late. Shoutout to my amazing girlfriend for her willingness to pick me up at 2:15am and still manage to look stunning for the shindig she had relatively early the next morning. Eternal damnation to Cheeburger Cheeburger for somehow screwing up our take-out lunch order (how does "onion rings" sound like "soggy nasty french fries?" ...and when I ask for mayo on my burger please helpfully assume that I do not in fact have any at home and actually
put it on there for me kthx. Done with the bitter now). Drove home in fun pouring rain from Richmond straight to my driveway; that was a little sketchy but the little car with the relatively new tires handled it beautifully. Slept straight from 11pm to 8:30am - that was LOVELY - and then work today was slack enough to let me update my blog. Word.
This one arrived the week between Christmas and New Year's Day back in '99. I'd wanted a road bike for months, and I could finally afford to plunk down the Visa for an employee purchase deal at the ol' bike shop. An '00 Bianchi Veloce, in a color scheme they hadn't done before or since. Italian-made steel frame. Every single component has been replaced at least once. It's as good a road bike as I'd really ever need, and it's in pristine condition. I'm gonna miss it.
