Grand Canyon, Part II

Getting up at 5:00 in the morning does not come naturally for me.  (I didn't even know that time came around twice a day!) But in order to witness a Grand Canyon sunrise, such a sacrifice was required.  I offered to take Debbie and any of the kids along with me, but they all chose to sleep in.  I can't really say that I blame them, but this was something I really wanted to do.

It was already starting to get light when I got to the van.  I took off for the nearest recommended sunrise-watching spot: Yavapai Point.  When I arrived there were already several dozen cars in the parking lot.

I found a place near the railing where I set up a tripod and video camera.  Within a few moments, I had other photographers all around me, so maybe I picked a good spot?  

As the sun came up, I was stunned at the changing shadows, the way the colors of the varied bands on the canyon walls seemed to "pop", and how the shafts of sunrise hit different parts of the canyon.

I concluded that it was the most beautiful sunrise I ever saw in my life.  (However, as my sister Jenny later pointed out, it's not like that category has a lot of competition.)  

After about an hour, I went back to the Lodge.  It was still too early to wake up the family, so I looked at some of my photographs and blogged.  We had so much planned for the day, I knew I had to get the family up at 8.  They resisted, but it was futile.  We were able to get up and out the door after an in-room breakfast from our food tote, and by 9:30 we were catching the shuttle at the visitor center for our first activity of the day: a hike down into the canyon from the South Kaibab Trailhead, about 1 mile to Ooh Aah Point.  (This was Debbie's pick.)

We made it down along the pathway with some steep drops off to the side.  We saw a snake along the trail.  It seemed like a long way down.

After a lot of huffing and puffing we finally made it to Ooh Aah Point!

Then it was time to hike back UP.  The guidebooks say to budget 1/3 of the time for hiking down and 2/3 for hiking back up.  But we did pretty good in getting up in about the same amount of time that it took going down.  The first picture below shows what the trail looked like looking up from Ooh Aah Point.  In the second photo, you can see people hiking back and forth on the switchbacks leading up to the rim.

We got back on the shuttle bus and stopped to look at the farthest east stop on the route: Yaki Point.  A very nice lady offered to take our picture, and I think we have the 2013 Truax Family Christmas Card:

We returned to the visitor center to get our van and drove to Tusayan for lunch.  More to follow...