Saturday, 7/16/11

These pictures were taken on Friday, I am just able to post them due to slow internet connection at the Squire Inn in the Grand Canyon.

Entering Arizona

Ethan and CC at Four Corners. Where we are standing in 4 states at one time.

Entering the Grand Canyon.

Christian arrived at the hotel about 3:30 a.m. from Phoenix. I had gotten up about 2:30 to wait for him and do some recording of our trip. We both went to bed as soon has he got in.

Our morning started early so we had to be down in the lobby of our hotel for the Inner Grand Canyon Jeep Tour by 7:30. We were the only passengers our guide, Jim, had to pick up from our hotel. The other passengers came from the KOA campsite and Williams, AZ. The family at the KOA site didn't show up the first time we went there, so we had to double back to pick them up. They were from Germany, so we think there might have been a language barrier that got them mixed up on pick up time.

Our first stop was the Grand Canyon Cavern, discovered by Walter Peck in 1927. This cavern was formed 345 million years ago. We descended around 450 feet to reach the bottom. At the bottom, the inn located at the caverns has a hotel room that can be rented by guests for a mere $700 per night. It was fairly large, accommodating 6 people. The guests can even have room service sent down. The only drawback is that the room has to be vacated by 9:00 a.m. when the tours begin. It was comfortable down there, a constant 56 degrees, which due to the lack of humidity feels more like 70 degrees.

The tour was interesting, but we've all seen more interesting caverns. The Grand Canyon caverns do not have stalactites or stalagmites, due to low humidity. One interesting fact was that in exploring the cavern some one discovered a prehistoric giant sloth, 15 feet tall. The University of Arizona now has the remains of the sloth, but they reproduced the giant and it's replica was in the cavern.

From the cavern we took our jeep, driven by our tour guide Jim, on down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. On our descension we encountered wild donkeys, elk, and longhorn sheelp. The donkeys would walk right up to our jeep where Jim would give them apples. The other animals were a lot more apprehensive towards us.

We picnicked at the bottom of the canyon, lunch was provided by the tour. It was very hot and I believe that we all each had about three bottles of water. After playing around at the bottom for a while, we traversed back up.

Ethan lost his Mesa Verde cap, it flew out of the window. But the jeep after us found it and brought it back to him. The drivers had fun squirting each other with water spray bottles. The water almost evaporated as soon as it hit a surface.

It was a real long day, we didn't get back to the hotel until around 7:30. We did quick showers and went to the hotel's restaurant for dinner. Ethan and Christian had a chance to play games in the game room. Our hotel had a bowling alley in it and Ethan thought that we should try that also. But we were all dead tired from all of the sun exposure so we all crawled into bed right after dinner.