Mission accomplished and we haven’t seized up yet!
Actually, we both feel surprisingly good. I’m sure the 12 hours we slept when we got back to the trailer on Thursday night helped. I think that’s the best sleep I’ve ever had!
Sure we have achey legs, a few blackened toes and sore shoulders but who wouldn’t after that kind of hiking. We were worried about how our knees and backs would take the abuse but they held up great. No pain there for either of us. No blisters anywhere on the feet which proved to us that we’ve got the perfect hiking boots right now. They’re really comfortable and well broken in. Dave saw one guy at the bottom who’s heels were a mess from his boots. And he still had to go back up...not fun.
I know exercising in the heat in Texas and New Mexico for 3 months before was very beneficial in getting our bodies ready for this. The dry baking heat of the high desert takes some getting used to too. Don’t think it would have gone as well had we just flown in from Ontario 2 days before the hike.
Actually there isn’t much we would have done differently. If we were to do this again, and believe me, neither of us is anxious to, we would absolutely pay to have the mule take a pack down and up for us. And we’d stay 3 or 4 nights at the bottom vs. 2. That way our bodies would have time to recover and we could do the other hikes without worrying about having the energy to get back up.
This afternoon we felt good enough to go back to the rim trail, specifically to the Bright Angel Trail overlook to get some additional appreciation for the goal we’d just accomplished. Wow we just did that, was all I could think when looking down. I’m very proud of us!
Only spent a couple of hours hiking around the rim, the legs were still feeling wobbly, especially at the spots where there’s big drop offs. Felt Grand Canyoned out!
A few last pictures of the Grand Canyon.
Tomorrow we’re heading for Blanding, Utah. It’s in the south east corner of the state, closer to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. We originally thought we’d head for Cedar City or St. George, UTAH in the South west corner due to their proximity to Zion and Bryce National parks but all the parks there were fully booked for weekend of May 19-20. They were expecting the population there to increase by about 20,000 people since that part of the world is apparently the best place to see the ring of fire created by the solar eclipse happening at about sunset on May 20th. We’ll just have to save the part of the country for a later part of this trip or another trip in the future.