Hiking the Grand Canyon

The one thing I remembered from our last hike into the Canyon more than 30 years ago was the bolded caution from the rangers to allow double the time for the hike up - if you hiked for an hour into the canyon, it would take you two hours to come back up the same distance.  With that firmly entrenched in our minds and the understanding that we are now older and that it could possibly take us longer than double the time, we hiked into the canyon on the Kaibab Trail, starting off from Yaki Point.  We found that going down was not as easy as it looked - it was quite steep, there were many switchbacks.  We felt it mostly in our knees.  Meeting breathless older people coming up the trail was enough of a reminder to not overdo it. We took our time as there were lots of photo ops - it was a scenic trail.

Note the switchbacks downs the side of the canyon

A mule train coming up the canyon

We found out from one of the riders what was in the cargo - garbage hikers left behind in the canyon!

This was where we stopped for lunch - the point was aptly named because there were indeed a lot of oohing and aahing at the view

  

And more than one species admiring the view...

Looking back at the trail going up, we decided it was time to go back.  We were only 780 ft. down but it felt like a long descent because of the switchbacks.  We expected the ascent to take twice as long but it turned out to be not too bad - we were pleasantly surprised - apart from our knees, our lungs were in better shape than we thought.

An artist at the top - I too wish I could paint this...