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Saturday, January 19, 2013
We slept in. Well, for us it was sleeping in. We got up a little after 7. After breakfast, Carl walked over and picked up the duffel while I sat in the lobby and waded through email and sent a long email to Kelly.
Once I got back to the cabin, we sorted through everything so that we could get laundry done. Once the laundry was finished, we went to the marketplace where we grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the deli and I bought a grey vest.
Then we drove back to the cabin to put everything away.
We decided to be Rim tourists for the rest of the day, driving along the West section of the Rim road, stopping at some of the overlooks and at Hermit's Rest, at the end of the road. There I bought a biography about Harvey Butchart.
The photo on the left shows the top portion of the Bright Angel Trail from Trailview Overlook. The brown house is the Kolb Studios at the trailhead. The photo on the right shows one of the views of the canyon from Hermit's Rest.
The three photos above were taken from the Trailview Overlook, which provides views of most of the upper half of Bright Angel Trail. The photo on the left shows the lower portion of this segment as it approaches Indian Gardens (just out of sight at the top of the photo). The center photo shows some of the switchbacks between the 1.5 mile rest house and the 3 mile rest house. The photo on the right shows more switchbacks that are located above the 1.5 mile rest house. You can see people on the trail in this photo.
The three photos above are also from Trailview Overlook and show varying views of the most treacherous corner of the Bright Angel Trail - the one with the frozed waterfall that has coated the trail in a thick coat of ice. People can be seen in all three of these photos.
Then we drove back to the Visitor's Center and Bookstore. It's really changed in the last seven years.
We stopped in the lobby bar for beers and to check email and the weather for the next few days. If it was going to be nice between here and Moab, we plan on spending two nights in Moab on the way home. Plan B would be to spend some time at the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Looks like we're going to Moab.
So we got cleaned up for dinner. We had made reservations at El Tovar to celebrate our fourth trip to Phantom Ranch. Nice dinner! The sea scallops were perfect.
The only sour note was when the idiot with the 12 month old (from Phantom Ranch) sat down at the table next to us. The rest of his family (wife, mother-in-law, and father-in-law) looked like they really didn't want to be there. Proud Papa was showing off...
Ah, well, it was soon over and we walked back to our cabin. The stars and moon were gorgeous.
We both ate too much tonight...