We went camping at the Grand Canyon with our two daughters and a friend of our youngest. We were invited by my sister and her family who were visiting the area from Seattle. We left Thursday and planned to come back Saturday. Today is Sunday.
View of the Grand Canyon at sunset
Here's a little bit of what happened on the trip. It was pretty epic, so I thought I'd better document it for posterity (and for your amusement). I've color-coded the positive and negative aspects of the trip for your reading pleasure.
- Our cooler broke on the drive to the canyon
- We saw a ton of elk near the campsite the first night - they were beautiful
- We later saw more elk, wild horses, and crows (one of which tried to eat our Cheerios box)
- We had a campfire Thursday night with extended family, s'mores, jokes, and songs accompanied by a ukulele
- The stars at night were incredible
- I haven't seen that many stars in the sky in years
- The first night, we went to find a bathroom after dark. We knew there was one near the registration area, so we hiked there only to find it was locked. On our way back, we got lost, thankfully stumbled on an open bathroom, and eventually found our way back to camp.
- There was wind and rain overnight
- Multiple bathroom breaks in the middle of the night were more fun with a little rain
- The car battery was dead in the morning - we still don't know why
- Friday was COLD and very windy
- The forecasted high for Friday was 67, but it probably didn't get above 47
- It's usually mid- to high-80s this time of year
- Nobody was prepared for how cold it was
- Most people ended up wearing their pajamas on Friday for warmth
- My youngest daughter forgot to bring a sweatshirt and blanket and ended up borrowing one of my layers (and the picnic blanket) for the rest of the trip
- Our lighter ran out of fuel partway through the day
- We went to see the canyon, which was breathtaking
- We did some hiking, saw some amazing views, bought a beautiful print of the canyon at sunset, and soaked in the wonder of the place
- Along the way, my daughter's friend found multiple opportunities to flirt with death in order to capture stupid photos (which turned out pretty cool)
- A hot chocolate stop midday made the cold more bearable
- We came back to camp for lunch to find the wind thrashing our tents, tearing out the stakes (one of the tents was completely blown over), and threatening to carry them to some other part of the park
- We fixed the tents, had lunch, and started seriously contemplating leaving a day early because it was so freaking cold
- We went driving in the afternoon and saw a lot of other views of the canyon. Each one was pretty mind-blowing.
- We headed back to camp with most of us feeling like it was time to go home because the cold and wind were so uncomfortable. We finally decided to cut the trip short (it was supposed to be a two-night trip, but ...), and as we were breaking camp, it started snowing and hailing pretty heavily. Not crazy heavy, but enough to make things uncomfortable.
- Frozen fingers trying to zip up bags
- Mud everywhere
- Hail in the bags, which would mean later drying out at home
- Keep in mind, this is Arizona ...
- We finally shoved all of the luggage in the car and in a roof rack carrier we had borrowed from a friend
- As we drove off, we discovered that the straps of the roof carrier weren't tight enough and were making noise in the wind. The noise was a bit like having a bunch of angry wasps in the car with us.
- As we're thinking about how to handle this new development on our way out of the park, someone rear-ended us. No one was hurt (except for a bit of a banged-up knee), but we had to get out and take care of that. Thankfully, the guy who hit us was very apologetic and really nice.
- We saw a dead elk on the side of the road on our way out
- We ended up stopping about 4-5 times trying to fix the stupid roof carrier. Somehow, we had made it work on the drive up, but we couldn't get it to work on the drive back.
- Finally, we pulled it off and stuffed everything in the car because we felt like spatial comfort wasn't as important as stopping the noise.
- We stopped for dinner (where the lines were long and the restrooms had no toilet paper), and my daughter's friend lost her phone, which set off a scramble. Thankfully, we found it in an obscure place in the now-slightly-cramped car.
- According to my youngest, the most traumatic experience of the entire trip was that her fortune cookie from dinner didn't have a fortune in it.
- As you can see, it was a rough trip ... :)
We ended up getting home around midnight on Friday. I think the negative events outnumbered the positive events by at least 2:1. But the positives were awesome. And the negatives were funny (we laughed a lot on the way home as we talked about how crazy the trip was). It turns out, there's no such thing as negative. Maybe Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
Overall, the trip was awesome. We will definitely be going back sometime for more views, more hiking, and the incredibly starry skies.
Starry skies at the Grand Canyon
