Jill here!
So today was the Grand Canyon. We went, with our waterproof coats and fleeces at the ready, as the forecast was rain and storms…not so. It was roasting! I’m sitting here typing (again, as we do our laundry) with a sunburnt hand of all things!!
The Grand Canyon was amazing. It defies description really and I’m sure no photos we have will do it justice. The sheer size of it, the silence, it’s just incredible.
Grand Canyon
There are a number of different trails you can take. Each has a number of stages – so basically you can go as far down as you want, remembering of course that it’s going to take twice as long to go back up!
So we picked our trail, and set off from the visitors centre, ignoring the free shuttle bus to the start of the trail, thinking ’sure, it can’t be that far’. An hour later, we were still walking! We eventually came out at a bus stop, only to discover that we were only half way to the start of the trail, and we had to go back to the visitors centre to get the bus! Oh well!!
We walked down the canyon, to slightly beyond the first stage of the trail we picked. And believe me, that was quite enough! It took us almost 2 hours, and we were knackered! What made things more interesting was that my blood sugar was only 4.6 to start…not really sensible when embarking on a hike. So I’m eating glucose tablets like they’re going out of fashion, and I still managed to go low later!
Hiking!!
After all that we were ready for some food. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be many eating establishments about. So we headed back into Canyon village – there are a lot of campsites etc there so there was a huge food shop. So we got sandwiches, crisps, yoghurts and apples! It was lovely eating something so normal!
So we headed back to our camp site. We had been told that there was a pool – ‘but it isn’t heated’ and 2 jacuzzis. So we decided to go for a swim. Turns out ‘not heated’ means so cold it’s practically frozen over. Jonny braved it. I stayed in the jacuzzi!
So that brings us up to now, we’re doing some more laundry, Jonny is making noises about a game of pool, and then we’ll go and get something to eat later.
And then tomorrow it’s off to Las Vegas…
