May 13, 2002
Most visitors take the free shuttle bus to get around the various points of interest. So, we took the shuttle from Trailer Village to the new information center, which was (is?) to serve as a hub for the light rail that was supposed to be built...until congress vetoed the $$ (the bus driver called the fiasco a "white elephant"). From there we went to Yaki Point and then back to Canyon Village. Canyon Village is sort of the hub of activity with several hotels, a train station, grocery store, and stuff like that. While we were wandering, Barb shared that she'd really like to see the Canyon from the bottom up rather than just from this southern rim looking down. There were two options: walk (more like hike) or ride. Being basically lazy, we opted to check out the riding. Mule riding. Sure enough, the young lady in charge of making those arrangements assured us that if we came back at 6:15AM, we'd be the first on the waiting list with a strong possibility we'd ride down to the bottom to Phantom Ranch where we'd spend the night, riding back up the next morning. She mentioned that there was a weight limit of 200 pounds fully clothed and that we needed to be sure we weren't bothered by heights. Hummmmmm. The weight issue would be close for me, but we were mostly interested in the heights issue. To resolve that we hiked down the Bright Angel Trail for a bit. Barb confessed that the heights from walking the trail weren't too bad, but she wasn't sure she wanted to be up on a mule looking down. What a relief to me! Once again, my maleness was saved by a loving wife. To say nothing of also saving nearly $700+! (yep, $342 plus tax per person). Of course, that would have included lunch on the way down, dinner, sleeping accommodations, and breakfast and lunch on the next day's return trip. But I really do wish I hadn't been too heavy for the poor mules. Rumors that going through an Indian Reservation and paying a $12 fee to drive to the bottom at the west end were either groundless or we just couldn't find the route, or we didn't talk to the right people. Either way, we didn't make it to the bottom. Both my older brothers and their families have done it. Charlie and family rode mules, and Ken and family hiked it.
It's just one great view after another. The last picture here (lowest right corner) shows some of the Bright Angel trail as a curvy line about in the middle of the picture. We're standing on the trail near the rim, about 1/4 mile down.
There are about 60 some odd California Condors living in the wild today. At one time in the '80's the count was down to 22-30, total - none in the wild. It was our good fortune to see four of them one morning and later another two as we toured around. There are about 20 of them living in the Canyon, and among them two breeding pairs. Last year there was an egg, but the adults didn't know what to do with it and it didn't survive. They're hoping that this year will be different. We happened to be in a place where a couple of the rangers were spotting them to track their activity and learned where they were nesting. We could even see the caves they were nesting in with our binoculars. Pretty special. Last spring is was the whooping cranes in Florida, and this year it's California condors in Arizona. It's a great life
Most of our "hikes" were simply walks along the rim trail each way from the different viewing points. Some of the rim trails aren't very "improved," and while it was obvious we were only a couple of people out of the many hundreds of thousands who happened to walk this trail, it was still rather private away from the center of the viewpoints to make it very special indeed.
Lunch hadn't been packed, and to stay in the Village to hear the Condor talk, we had to buy lunch at the little fountain--2 hotdogs, 2 small bags of chips, and a couple of single ice cream cones for $14 reminded us why it is we like packing our lunches when we're touring about.