24 Hours at the Grand Canyon | Arizona Day 3

Welcome to the Grand Canyon! We are so pumped to be at our 16th national park and after living in Arizona for eight years when I was a kid I am so glad to finally make it to the Grand Canyon. Yeah we are here at Hopi Point and we're gonna check out Sunset and it's shaping up to be a good one. It's really nice out so it should be a pretty awesome one. That sunset was grand. Get it? Okay. So last night we just grabbed dinner and then went to bed. This morning we woke up super early to catch the sunrise at Yavapai Point. I think that's what it's called. It's really close to our hotel. Oh my gosh. Yeah and it was a good one. It was magnificent. Right? Yellows, orange, pinks. It was beautiful. All the colors. Really cold though. My eyes are watering. I feel like I'm crying. My hand is probably 10 degrees. So really cold but worth it. It's worth staying around like right after the sun comes up because it clears out here. There's like two other people here right now. We always leave the sunrises and sunsets too early so. We stuck around for this one. Yeah we've made it a point to start doing that so. It's beautiful so we're gonna now go grab some breakfast and then take on the Grand Canyon. And the sweet nectar of the gods. Coffee. Yes. Lots of coffee. So we just took a shuttle from where we parked our car by the hotel over to where the trailhead that we're going to do begins. We highly recommend checking out or using the shuttles if you're at the Grand Canyon especially during the busy season. We hear parking lots can fill up really fast. Today doesn't seem like that's the case. I don't know if it's because it's a Sunday or like the last day of spring break. But it's saving us time from having to drive from parking spot to parking spot. And so we can just hike and walk around and explore. We actually created a Grand Canyon guide which we'll link to below. And in that guide we have a map of the shuttle routes because it kind of gets a little confusing. There's a few different ones. And then for each spot on our guide we'll say how to get to it whether you walk or take the shuttle. So we had the shuttle drop us off at the Bright Angel Trailhead which we're going to start now. We're really excited for this because we actually get to go down into the canyon. So not all the way but part of the way. We're going to go three miles in and then three miles back up. You can go all the way. You can backpack it. You can do overnight stuff but we obviously don't have time for that. So we're just going to go and kind of see what we find. And really excited if it's going to get warmer as we go down which will be nice because it's still a little cold out. So fun Grand Canyon fact for you. This is actually the park's 100 year anniversary. So in 1919 the Grand Canyon became established as a national park. It is also the second most visited national park in the U.S. after Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And last year there were over 6.2 million visitors at the park. So very busy. A couple other fun facts for you. So the south rim is 7,000 feet above elevation and while the north rim is 8,000 feet. And the deepest part in the canyon is over a mile deep. So we're not hiking all the way to the bottom. No not today. We're just going three miles but we're not totally sure what the elevation is for that but it won't be too bad. So I can't remember if we've said this already but we're at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The north rim you can see it all the way over there. The crazy part it takes like three to four hours just to drive over there because you have to go like all the way around. But the road to the north rim is closed during the winter. I think it opens early May so we couldn't go there on this trip but we hear it's awesome. So if you're visiting in the summer months go check that out. We hear it's less busy and the views are still really really really cool. We are halfway down but the going down is the easy part. So one and a half miles down into the canyon they have this rest house and they have a bathroom there so if you need to go to the bathroom or just want to have a snack or just want to turn around at this spot it's a great spot to do so. But we're going to keep going. We keep seeing people going up and they're panting pretty hard so we're trying to save our energy a bit but it's tons of fun so far. It's really cool to walk down into the Grand Canyon. There's also this awesome big spacious spot right below the mile and a half rest house where you can sit, have a picnic, get photos. Awesome. We made it to the three mile rest stop. Hallelujah. Best lunch spot ever. Beautiful. Yeah best lunch spot. All right we are on our way back up. So we learned that from the rim to where we are it was about a 2,100 foot elevation difference. So now we have to go back up that in three miles which isn't too bad. We've done worse in Washington. So I think we got it. The heat and the sun is what might get us though. Update. We are halfway to the top. We're actually making really good time. We are really thirsty though and it's hot. We have a lot of water with us but you know you still want to ration it out just in case. But yeah the nice thing is that there are a lot more trees at the Grand Canyon than I thought. Whenever you see photos it just looks like it's like pink and gray and you don't expect to see so many trees but there are some shaded spots so take advantage of those and take breaks. It'll make it feel a lot better. Make sure you have lots of this stuff. You need it. We did it. That was a tough one. Took us about four and a half hours with an hour break at the bottom and a few stops along the way. We definitely stopped more going down and up than we normally do but it just gets kind of warm and it's a lot of elevation so I highly recommend taking breaks. Bring a lot of water. I know we keep saying that but you get really thirsty. It's really dry here but awesome hike. I loved it. Even if you don't have like a full four and a half hours to dedicate to this definitely check out some of it. It's really cool but definitely start early because we started at like 9 a.m and it was cooler out and now it's warmer. It feels pretty good right now at the top of the room but down there it's pretty warm so try to start early to avoid being out there in like the full sun. We're seeing people out there in like dark jeans and like dark long sleeve sweatshirts. I don't know how they're doing it. I'm so hot. I wanted to take my shirt off. So awesome hike. Highly recommend it if you're at the Grand Canyon South Rim. Do it. So every national park we go to we have a tradition where we buy a patch for everyone. So we just got our Grand Canyon patch. We're gonna take it to an overlook to go snap a photo of the patch with the canyon in the background. That's another part of the tradition. We have yet to figure out like what we actually do with the patch once we get home. Right now they're all stored in a box but maybe one day we'll figure it out so if you have a suggestion let us know. Just a cool little thing we like to do and it always just makes us smile. Look back at all of our patches. Grand Canyon is officially over. We were only here a little less than 24 hours but we still had an incredible time. Yeah it's one of those places where you come and there's several viewpoints and once you get to see those viewpoints you've kind of seen it. Yeah it looks similar in a lot of the different spots and there's definitely more to do here than what we got to do. We still feel like we got to get a good experience and kind of get the gist of what the Grand Canyon is and it's an awesome awesome place. Yeah. So now we are going to head to Page, Arizona where we have a really fun day planned tomorrow. But first we have a two and a half hour road trip. So we're staying at Yavapai Lodge at the Grand Canyon. It's one of the hotels actually in the park which is nice and convenient. We walked in our room and we have bunk beds. I call top bunk.