The Grand Grand Canyon - Double Crossing 46 miles

The Grand Canyon -our first vacation! and it's a running vacation. I'm so fortunate that Gary (my husband), is crazy about running too! The flight from PDX to Las Vegas was quite scary for me. A 2 hour flight was plenty. We had turbulance along with tense sweaty hands. Darin & Trisha, Ronda, Micheal, Drake and Susan all flew

together.


Once we got to the Grand Canyon Lodge. Everyone got settled in for the night. I layed out all our food, gels, bottles and lots more! The little cabins we stayed in were terrible! paper thin walls, you could hear all the conversations. We were real lucky our neighbor was throwing up our second night! ewwww.

Sunday morning 4am. we headed down a steep and stinky trail (mule urine) for the first 1.5 miles or so. You could see lights all going down the canyon since there were approx. 11 or more people going down. It looked like fireflys in the canyon. As the sun started to break the colors were so brilliant! Gary and I continued to soak in everything. Animals, flowers, rocks and more rocks. The 7mile section through the canyon floor was so nice with a little downward slope....that would haunt me on the return trip. The sun started to really break on us as we started to climb slowly up the South side. We still were fortunate, because the heat reached around 94ish degrees.

Making it to the South Rim, it was amazing at how good we all felt 22+ miles and we all felt really good! We grabbed a bite to eat and used the porta potty and fed the squirrel (I know your not suppose to do it...but I needed the picture for my son - he loves squirrels). Gary took off on the downhill and I followed shortly behind. He told people that he was running because his wife was chasing him. Yes, the canyon floor was now uphill and I walked/ran it. Then the real climbing started....about 1 mile out of roaring springs I kicked things in and pushed hard to see if I could pass anyone. Gary and I passed 2 young guys in their 20's....woohoo. They kept passing us earlier in the day, but we made it to the top first. I never thought I'd be so happy to smell Mule Urine, but it meant that we were really close to the top. Not bad for "old people".

Gary said, "you were holding out on me".

It's just a real mental game, sometimes I want to play and other times I don't give myself enough credit. Total mileage: 46 Miles (approx.) Total running time: 15:20 (includes all snack times and potty breaks). It was the farthest/longest either of us had ran.

We woke the next morning and did 10 miles with Ronda & Micheal. Gary and I were scared about the stiffness of our legs, but things worked out in a couple miles. We keep saying over and over, words can't describe how beautiful everything is.....YOU must GO!! Even if you hike from the North Rim down to the Caretakers place & first creek w/a bridge, it's about 12 miles round trip. Plan to leave early and make a day of it. Just go. We are trying to adjust with being home. We both loved running each day it was so exciting!