my little cookie jar: grand canyon

I have never been to the Grand Canyon before. Nor did I really know anything more about it except for some quick TV or movie clips of the characters stopping to see it.

Let's start from the beginning though, shall we?

It was the beginning of June when Brett and I realized that we had a free flight on Southwest that was about to expire and had to be used before the beginning of July. Now that only gave us a couple weeks to figure out when, what and where to use this free flight. We tossed around a lot of ideas and knowing this was only going to be a weekend getaway, we settled on Arizona. Scottsdale to be exact {suggested by yours truly} because I went there as a kid with my parents and loved it. As we started talking about Arizona, it hit us.. LET'S GO TO THE GRAND CANYON! We quickly started researching the park and talking to friends who had been and it all became so over whelming. With only 2 days how is this all going to work? We came up with a plan and everything started falling into place. We booked the hotels, car rental, flights - we were set!

We flew out on Friday afternoon and arrived in Arizona on the hottest weekend on record, of course. There was one newspaper clipping that we saw, that caught our eye...

We arrived and drove out to Scottsdale to check into the hotel. It was still easily over 100 at 8:00 when we headed out to see the Old Town and find something to eat. We walked all over Old Town and made some plans for the next day to come back and check out some shops when they opened. Since it was so hot, we couldn't get our mind set on food until we stumbled into this place called Burger Rehab. Mostly because we liked the name and partially because we just needed to sit down and have some water.

We were so tired by the time we walked back to our hotel that we just crashed and decided to make the most out of the morning and get up early to beat the heat.

In the morning we went for a swim in the pool and unfortunately had to check out of the hotel by 11am. We drove through Old Town again and stopped at the places we saw last night before hitting the road and driving up to the Grand Canyon because we wanted to watch the sun set. It was about 250 miles of desert and open road. The journey went really fast because we were admiring the scenery and making a game plan to get the most of the Grand Canyon with our short time.

We made it in perfect time to see the sun set over Grand Canyon - it was so peaceful, serene, beautiful than I could ever attempt to describe in words. After the sun was gone and the pink sky faded, we drove out to Flagstaff to check into our hotel and get everything ready for our big hike. Not to mention we needed to get up and out of the hotel for 6am.

We arrived to the park promptly at 7.30am. We got ourselves ready and made it over to the trailhead. Unfortunately, we were under a little bit of pressure because we needed to do our hike and get back into the car to make the 4-5 hour drive back to Phoenix to return the car by 7pm to catch our flight at 9pm. We decided to hike the South Kaibab Trail, which actually takes you down to the river but we knew we wouldn't have enough time to get all the way down there. This hike is extremely tricky because it's all downhill first. It's early, you're feeling peppy, you're walking downhill so it's not too strenuous on your muscles. At about 10am is when the heat becomes noticeable as there is almost no shade on the trail. Then you remember the inevitable, you have to walk UP everything you just came down to make it out of there. The uphill was very hard going, especially as the sun was getting stronger and stronger. We had lots of water with us and protein bars and energy blocks to keep us fueled, which is key. It was a very rewarding feeling once we made it back to the top, the same place as we started just 4 hours and 6.1 miles ago.

Feel free to share your stories or experiences about the Grand Canyon, or any other hike - I'd love to hear yours!