As you can tell from the title, we're already in Los Angeles! We haven't had a very good internet connection for the past week, and when we did I didn't have enough time to keep up with this blog, but I'll go through and give some details of our last week of travels.
After Sedona we went to Grand Canyon. We arrived right before sunset so after setting up our campsite we went to see the Canyon. You can see all the pictures you want of that place and you will never grasp how huge it is until you get there. My mom's word for describing it is probably the best - dizzying. It is pretty overwhelming looking over the edge at first. The campground there was fantastic. My dad has camped a lot and said that may be his favorite campground ever. You could see the Milky Way at night, our spot was huge and there were plenty of trees around so we had a good amount of shade when it was warm enough that we needed it. There were also these humongous ravens flying around the area that were literally about up to my knee. I'm used to having to make sure you put all of your food away to keep the bears away on the east coast, so it's nice only having to worry about some birds (of course these birds would also probably be able to destroy us).
We hiked down Bright Angel Trail a little, which essentially zig-zags down the canyon from where all of the lodges are. The Park doesn't allow dogs to hike below the rim, so my dad and Connor stayed up at the lodges and had some coffee and such. It takes about 5 1/2 hours to hike down or up the entire trail, which dead ends at Phantom Lodge so people can stay the night because it is very dangerous/deadly to go up and down in one day. We only went down for about 20 minutes or so because they warn you that it is twice as hard to come back as it is to get down. They were right on because it took us the next 40 minutes to get back up. One day I would like to hike all the way down to the Lodge (they serve a family size dinner and have bunk beds and everything so it just seems like a great concept, plus you're at the Colorado River essentially), but we weren't prepared to do that long of a hike at all. There are signs all over the place saying how dangerous the hikes out there are, even if you don't try to go up and down in one day, so it makes you pretty weary of doing too much. Well, it makes normal people weary, Zach thinks he can defy the odds. There were even signs about a girl who was 24 or so, had run the Boston Marathon and was in Med School, yet she went on a hike where she didn't realize how long it was and wasn't fully prepared food/water wise and died. Pretty sobering.
One of the really cool parts of that national park was all of the elk just walking around. In Maine I'm used to seeing Moose Crossing signs, but you never actually see a moose. Well we saw elk probably 5 separate times - once in our campground and twice the elk was RIGHT next to my car. The second time an elk came right next to my car was actually kind of scary, because he walked straight towards my car, staring at me while I took his picture, and he had huge antlers. But it was definitely more awesome than scary.
The ride out of Grand Canyon was pretty incredible. We stopped at other overlooks which looked fairly different than the part of the canyon we had camped at. The colors change a little and there were more trees. There was also an area that had a lookout tower so that was pretty nice. As you drive towards Utah you go through an Indian Reservation so there are a lot of little places on the side of the street where people are trying to sell jewelry and pottery and stuff. The mountains and ridges on the side of the road were beautiful, and sometimes the entire area would be pink so the clouds were reflecting pink.
And now its time to go to California Pizza Kitchen. Stay tuned for Bryce and Zion blogs later :)
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