SOUTH RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA

Bismarck Lake and Humphreys Peak with friends

SCOOTER AND LUCY LOVE TO SHARE!

 
After a lovely afternoon hike and great evening meal with friends from Flagstaff we sadly left so to cheer ourselves up we moved to the Grand Canyon. Wow, what a change since we were here last, they have done lots of work everywhere. We finally managed to get a campsite at Mather Campground actually in the park, half a mile from the rim, we have tried in the past and its been full so I was so pleased despite it taking us about half an hour to get into the site they gave us – tight is not the word! Here for three nights, we did the obligatory sunset walk which was beautiful and were rewarded by seeing elk wandering around.

SUNSET NEAR MATHER POINT - GRAND CANYON

ME AND MY SHADOW IN THE CANYON

We hiked about 7 miles next day along the Hermit's Rest rim trail, we have done it before but its a great walk with endless views. We supposedly saw a 5month old Condor in a cave high up on the cliff face. Well I saw the cave but you had to have a good imagination to see the tail of the young Condor!

In the evening we went to a Ranger talk about Native Americans in the Grand Canyon and how they thrived, he talked about Ethnobotany – how they utilized plants and trees etc. We learnt lots of useful information should we ever be in a survival situation! But also how we use these plants in our daily life now. That vanilla ice cream we ate was probably flavoured by Ponderosa pine bark. The pesto from the pinon pine, the gin flavoured with the juniper berries and apparently the more juniper flavour the cheaper the gin! And something from my childhood – cochineal – my Mum used it to dye our eggs for us to decorate at Easter. Comes from a beetle that lives on the prickly pear cactus and we have often seen the white coating on the pear and not realised it had the beetle under it. A fascinating evening!



TARANTULA ON THE TRAIL

CAN YOU SPOT THE HEART?

THE WAY DOWN TO SOUTH KAIBAB TRAIL - OFF WE GO!

The sun was shining so we decided to stay another day and woke up surrounded by seven Elk.
We hiked another rim trail on our last day, from Mather Point to South Kaibab and back again then on to the Village area - 7 ½ miles – got the shuttle bus back and spotted a bull Elk – stunning.

An emotional leaving as this is probably the last time we will visit the Grand Canyon, we have been here four times and twice at the North Rim. A truly memorable place – one of the seven natural wonders of the world – 277 miles long, a mile deep and 10 miles across!