Day 10 (July 13): The Grand Ol' Canyon

Total Driving Distance: 340.5 miles (trip total: 3,462.3 miles)

States Traveled To: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona

Main Activity: Using the bathroom at Four Corners, Grand Canyon

On the way to the Grand Canyon, we decided to stop at Four Corners. However, once we got there, we found out that it cost $6 to enter the fenced-in area and to stand on the plaque. We did not think it was worth it, so instead of paying the $6 to go inside, we pulled up to the attendant's booth and asked if they had a bathroom. "Uhh, we have a porty-house," the lady told us. She then pointed to a Porta-Potty in the distant desert, standing alone.

In any other situation,we would not have used the porty-house, but we really had to go and bathrooms were pretty rare in this part of the country. So we used the extremely hot, out-of-toilet-paper, nasty porty-house. And that was our experience at Four Corners.

A few hours later, we were at the Grand Canyon. We entered through the eastern entrance and the Visitors Center and the more famous parts of the Canyon were on the western side (about 30 miles away). Before we headed that way, we got out and looked at the Watch Tower that had originally been built to house the Visitors Center.

We got our great first view of the Canyon and the Colorado River:

After that, we drove to the other side of the Park. We walked around for a bit, mostly along the scenic Rim Trail that follows the edge of the cliff. We then rode the bus down to some of the other viewpoints. We decided not to do any hiking that day because we were tired and kinda freaked out from some of the signs posted around the park. One sign told the story of a woman who had run the Boston Marathon, then died while hiking in the Grand Canyon with her boyfriend (you should know that it was 107 degrees outside and they had been hiking with only 1 liter of water for both of them on a 27 mile trail that should have taken at least two days but they decided to do it in one). We also feared some of the wildlife in the area because of signs like these:

We saw some incredible viewpoints, but some of them looked a little fake, like the one below:

We visited the John Wesley Powell memorial which was near another scenic viewpoint, then decided to walk back to where our car was parked. I really underestimated how far away the car was. We probably walked almost two miles back to the car and most of it was through the woods (we took a shortcut). On the way, we saw a mule deer walking across our path. It wasn't the only deer we saw in the Park (see below).

When we finally did make it back to the car, the sun had begun to set. A Grand Canyon sunset is not something you want to miss, so we found a good spot on the cliffs with everyone else and stopped to watch the sunset. And I'm glad we did, because it was one of the best I've ever seen.