Grand Canyon National Park North Rim

The object of the day: Grand Canyon National Park. Finally! Well, actually only the first etappe. Grand Canyon National Park is so big, that you can visit it from three sides: the North Rim and South Rim in the East, and the Sky Walk in the West (and also via Helicopter, from Las Vegas). And since we are visiting a bunch of parks that are to the North of the Grand Canyon, North Rim is an obvious first choice. 

A first pleasant surprise was the discovery of the 'America The Beautiful' annual pass. This pass will cost you only $80, but grants therefore entrance to all National Parks, Monuments, Preserves, … that charge a fee, to the driver of the car (who signs off the pass) and everyone insides his/her car. Taking into account that entrance fees vary between $8 and $25, this is a good deal. Even better: we got reimbursed for the fees we had payed before! Awesome =) 

Then about the park: first thing we did was pay a visit to the Visitor Center, where we got a bunch of information and where we bought a detailed topo-map of the park, seeing as we are planning to do a two-day hike at the south rim, called the Bright Angel trail. Next we checked out the Bright Angel overview point. Que? Yes, from this point, you can see the trail leading all the way from the South Rim, up to where we were standing: the Bright Angel trail and the Kaibab trail, both joining at the Colorado river and both taking one day if you do them one-way. The view from up here is magnificent, as you can see the full width of the Grand Canyon. Many of the canyon peaks have names referring to Asian temples (like Vishnu Temple, etc.), and if you take a look at them, you can see why. Kevin – as he has been to Asia – saw the similarities to temples he had seen in Thailand and Cambodia. So did Ann, but from the Largo Winch comics instead of from personal experience =) 

Next we went to the camping site and set up our tent: our first camping experience in the US! It was very quiet there now. In season, you have to make reservations, but now it's first-come first-served and as there is almost nobody, that is really no problem. I think there were only two other sites taken that day... 

In the afternoon we visited a couple of viewpoints and did a couple of small hikes (up to Angels Window and Cape Royal) and got back to the camp site early because we were hungry and we needed to get a fire started first! Although it is prohibited to use dead or down wood, we scrambled some together anyway: but we promise, it was a one-time only because we hadn't had a chance to buy wood beforehand. At the campsite, there were also a lot of Abert and Kaibab squirrels hopping around, so cute!

For more photo's, check picasa