Terral had been planning this trip for a while. Well, I guess that's not very accurate. He and his friend had decided several weeks before that they were going to hike in the Grand Canyon, but because we had been so busy, there had really been very little planning. A couple weeks before the hike, they decided it would make more sense to camp the night before so they wouldn't have to get up insanely early to drive there the day of the hike, and Terral and I decided that Ethan and I would tag along so we could spend more time with Terral. The two of us were only going to do a little bit of hiking, if at all.
Well, the Zion 100 rolled around, and we did our first camping of the season. It was a really nice break from the daily grind. But when we got back from it, I was seriously questioning the wisdom of going to the Grand Canyon the following week. Terral was drowning in sandal orders, we had a couple other trips coming up after it, and could we really justify the gas money? Plus we had just had a nice little break from the grind. I'm sure I could come up with more reasons why it didn't seem like such a good idea any more if it were all fresh in my mind, but ya git whatcha git.
Anyway, I considered staying home even if Terral decided to go, but we already had the campsite reserved (so not normal for us to camp in an actual campground) and I had only been to the Grand Canyon once before. And that time we basically just went to the visitor center and several lookout points. So it was hard to pass up the opportunity to do a little hiking there. In the end, we just went with it.
Well, Thursday arrived, and not too unexpectedly we left later than we were hoping. Ethan did okay on the drive, but it took him way longer to fall asleep than I thought it would. He didn't fall asleep until I think the last half hour. We kept him somewhat happy by singing Old McDonald and The Wheels on the Bus. Lots of animal sounds in both. Oh, didn't you know that monkeys ride buses?
We arrived at the campsite pretty late. Terral's friend and his son were already there, which saved us from searching too much in the dark. I was surprised at how cold it was. Since I hadn't looked into this trip at all, I didn't realized that we were going to such a higher elevation. Our last camping trip had been quite hot, so I came a little unprepared for the cold.
Ethan woke up when we parked, and I had kind of a hard time getting him back to sleep once we had the tent set up. I felt bad for our fellow campers who had to listen to his crying. But I think the wind drowned it out pretty well. Once he went to sleep, I think our night was rather uneventful.
The next morning, he woke up all "whoa, where are we? this is cool!" That was pretty fun. Terral ventured into the world of granola making (I know you're wondering what took us so long), so we had that for breakfast. We'd forgotten the yogurt, but our friends shared some milk with us.
Terral was pretty antsy to get going. He didn't want Rick (the friend) and his son to be waiting on us since we had decided to bring Ethan. So we hurried and got everything packed up. We loaded up and
We didn't have jumper cables, and neither did Rick. After a little while, Terral found a ranger who provided us with some and Rick jumped our car. We thanked the ranger who looked a little sternly at us, and we made our way to the trailhead. Terral parked and we tried to open up the trunk. The car was completely dead again and the button wouldn't work. And the trunk won't open with the key. Half of the stuff we needed for the hike was in the trunk. We were starting to feel like this was a very bad idea indeed.
Well, we tried everything we could think of until a truck pulled in behind us. We shamefacedly asked again to borrow some jumper cables. The guy didn't want to lose his parking spot, but he let us use his cables when we said our friend could come jump our car. He told me that he makes sure he has cables in every vehicle. I think he thought we were a little insane for being so unprepared and going on our hike in spite of our dead car. I kind of agreed with him.
But go we did.
To be continued. . .
Oh Mary, please finish!
ReplyDeleteWow, I was there and still the suspense is killing me!
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