Holiday to the Pacific West Coast in Aug 2006: Day 18 – Grand Canyon

Continued dreaming about falling off the Grand Canyon!  Anyway, breakfast at El Tovar was an experience: waitresses were unattentive, Vick was burnt on her arm when the coffee was refilled, and my eggs were underdone!

Filled our rucksack again for an 8 mile hike along the rim: water, energy bars, nuts etc.  So we headed out on the busto Hermit’s Rest to start the hike back to the village. 

At Hermit’s Rest we grabbed a coffee and joked about the lightning that we could see across the canyon.

We also wondered why we were the only ones in shorts, and decided that everyone else had got it wrong.

We completed about 2 miles and within 10 minutes it started tipping it down.  Considering all our preparations we hadn’t bothered checking the weather and hadn’t bothered to pack our waterproofs! 

So in our shorts and t-shirts we were soaked and freezing.  We continued hiking until the bus stop, overall we covered more than 4 miles. 

Some of it was dangerously close to the edge of the rim, and Vick got ‘the jitters’.

In the afternoon we headed to the Imax just out of the park where everyone had gone to (due to the weather). 

Although there were some good sweeping camera shots of the canyon, who the heck wants to see some made-up scenes of the original Indians and how they lived in and around the canyon? 

The film had been continually showing for 21 years!  And you could buy the film on DVD in 8 different languages for $31.  What a rip-off!

Chilled out in the late afternoon and then went for dinner at the Arizona Room which is linked to the Bright Angel hotel. 

Food was good and generally a good evening was had by all.

Planning to leave early tomorrow to head back towards Kingman and then on towards Las Vegas.

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