Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon

So we left Vegas on Monday, and checked out the Hoover Dam on the way to the Grand Canyon. The Dam was enormous, holding 17 generators (8 for Nevada, 9 for Arizona). Each of the generators were 7 stories tall (only the top three stories were shown in the pictures) and produce a total of 2 GigaWatts of energy. Quick history: the concrete used in the Dam was originally estimated to take 100 years to cool until it was structurally sound. They had to get around this by developing the largest refrigeration project in the world (to that point in time), by piping coolant throughout the Dam. Thought that was awesome. Over 96 people died on this 5 year project. More info can be found on Wikipedia. After we left the Hoover Damn, we headed out towards the Grand Canyon and stopped an hour short to camp for the night.

The next day, Tuesday, we packed up camp and ventured on to the Grand Canyon. We found a campsite just outside that was free to us courtesy of a pregnant couple who had to cancel for the night. After we had a place to stay, we determined a day hike was in store. We drove up to the Southern Rim of the canyon, and then took a shuttle to where we began our hike. The first sites of the Grand Canyon were amazing. It’s tough to describe, but honestly it looked fake. I walked up and I was just in shock at how enormous it was. It’s one thing to see it in pictures, but when you are standing on the rim looking down, it still manages to blow your mind no matter how many pictures you’ve seen.

We started the hike at Hermit’s Point, the most “western point” accessible to the public of the canyon. I put western point in quotes because as we were waiting for the shuttle, one of the park rangers informed us that the glass outlook where you can literally stand on the canyon and look down was about 5 HOURS west. Not 5 miles, 5 hours west. Just to give you an idea of how huge this thing is, he said it was close to Vegas.

So we started our descent into the Canyon, in preparation for a 4-6 hour hike according to the guide. We were set to hike 5 miles round trip, with an elevation difference of 1700 feet. We started our hike at 7000 feet, and made our way down to the Santa Maria Springs which was at a mile high. We took plenty of pictures of our hike and the views we saw on the way down, and made it to the springs in about an hour. There was a nice little hut, blocked from the sun by a bunch of vines. There was also a guest book there that we read through a little bit and signed it ourselves.

The hike back up was tough to say the least. The rule of thumb is account for double the amount of time it takes you to get up, as it did to get down. Well going down was easy for all three of us. Naturally we broke a sweat in the 85 degree heat, but the altitude didn’t have an impact on our shortage of breath. The hike up was a different story. It took us two hours to get back up (so we held true to the rule of thumb), but it was a brutal two hours. 2.5 miles, and up an elevation of 1700 feet averages out to be an incline of 7.34 degrees. There were some flat parts of the trail, which just made the steep inclines that much harder. However, it was completely worth it. It was unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It also helped that we took a trail with very few hikers. We only saw a total of 8 people on our hike. When we got back to the top, we took about 30 minutes to recover before getting some dinner at the lodge. Afterwards we went to see the sunset over the canyon. Needless to say it was beautiful. We met a couple kids from Nantucket watching the sunset as well and Andy knew some of their friends – small world. One of the kids must have said “That’s what’s up” at least 10 times in our 5 minute conversation. We found it pretty funny, but the phrase really does work in a lot of situations. After our day of hiking and our wandering during the sunset, we headed back to camp to set up and pass out.

The next day we were headed to Phoenix for the Diamondbacks vs. Cubs game. Before we left, we decided to check out a couple points along the scenic route of the southern rim. At one stop, we witnessed a proposal, and at another we went up into a watchtower that overlooked the canyon and enjoyed the views a few last times. We then went to a pub in the rim lodge for lunch and a very anticipated World Cup matchup between Germany and Spain. What we didn’t realize though, is that this pub would be packed with people bringing in chairs from other areas of the lodge and café. It was tough to even move around. The pub was split half with tourists from Germany and half with tourists from Spain. It just goes to show how big a deal the World Cup is in the foreign countries that even during vacations, they find time to gather, paint their faces, and cheer for their homeland’s soccer team.