Day 11: Albuquerque, NM to Grand Canyon, AZ.

I woke with a small hangover that I busted out of my system with a Belgian Waffle from the restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. Wicked slow service, wicked small tip. I hit the road after and drove through lots and lots of desert. The coolest thing was coming over a hill and seeing a mountain in the distance. All you can see is a blue silhouette. But eventually the mountain starts to take color and shape. Then all of the sudden you're in the mountain. It was pretty cool. Once I got close to the National Park area, trees starting sprouting and I felt I was back in NE.

When I got to the Grand Canyon National Park, all the camp sites were booked except for one that was 25 miles east of the entrance. I started driving out and all of a sudden there was an opening in the trees. You could see the canyon and it was amazing. I almost crashed because it was so prestine. It blew my mind. I kept driving though so I could get a spot at the campsite.

I got to the campsite around 3:30 and it started pouring out. I sat it out in my car then after 15 minutes the rain slowed down and I rushed to put my tent up. When I finshed the rain had almost completely stopped. And when I finished my dinner around 4:30, the rain had stopped altogether and there were blew skies.

I got my energy up and headed to the canyon. At first sight the view is spectacular. Like nothing I've ever seen before. When I get my cord I will post pictures, but they won't so it justice. For the most part I stayed close to rim. Unless you are on a designated hiking trail it is pretty dangerous out there. There is a lot of rubble that can slip out from under your foot and off the edge you go. I was doing pretty well keeping my balance and dropping down a couple levels, and then I got stupid. I was paying attention and went to lower myself down and put my hand right on top of a cactus. I pulled up an excruciating pain. I had inch long needles sticking out of my fingers and little tiny needles scattered all over my hand. It took about ten minutes to get them out and I think I still have some little ones dug deep in.

I continued to my first lookout point and sat a while. This foreign couple came by and told me about the sunsetting on the other side of a cliff face. I made it my mission to get there, but my mission was a direct tiresome route. I was climbing over rocks, scaling cliff walls, balancing on rubble. It was intense and exhilirating. When I got the cliff wall, there were all these tourists walking around in sandles and little kids playing. I felt cheated that I could take this hard path to get to somewhere that a road leads. So once I got there I headed down. The lower and further out I went, the more secluded it become. Until I got a point where I couldn't see anyone, let alone even hear them. It was so sirene and so relaxing. I stayed there for half an hour. On the cliff wall behind me were names carved into the stone. It was a tough spot to get to and I wondered how many people actually get to this point. There was one name dated back to 1954. Over 50 years ago and the name still looks great! I tried adding my name to the wall but 'R', '0' and '8' are kind of hard to carve.

I had been down there for a while and the wind was starting to pick up. I figured I should try to climb back up while people could still be around to help me incase I got stuck. No problem getting back up through. Alot of rock climbing, that was tons of fun. I wasn't until I was back up that I realized what I had done. If the nub I was holding broke, I would've feel backwards down the canyon. Back at the top there were still tons of tourists so I went to another secluded area to watch the sunset. It was absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to post pictures.

After the sunset I headed back to camp and got briefly lost. The sound of voices carried me in the right direction back to camp. It was dark by the time I got back and I tried cooking on my sterno. Took about 40 mintues to cook a can beans but it was tasty and hit the spot.

There was a fire at the site next to mine and I figured I go ask If I could join them. They looked like an older couple in their 40s. But the guy kept going over and putting the fire out. Then starting it back up briefly. Then puttting it out. When I finished eating he had just put the fire out so I figured I'd just go read in my tent. About 10 minutes later the fire was back up and they were out there talking around it. But since I was already in my tent, I thought it would be wierd to get out of the tent to join them. So I continued reading. And I was way off with who they were. The guy was actually French and there were two girls from Italy. Would've been a cool groupl to chill with but the longer I stayed in my tent the more wierd it would've been to join. Not to mention my clock was off and I thought it was an hour later than it was. So going to bed at 11:30 seemed alright, but it was really 10:30. Oh well, it was still a good day.