This past Memorial Day Weekend, I went camping at the Grand Canyon with a random German backpacker I’d friended online and a group of people I met through a local camping club. While I was a little apprehensive about spending a long weekend in the woods with a group of people I’d never met in person (the camp out was organized through the social networking site, meetup.com), it turned out to be fun.
My first night there though, I made the mistake of leaving my food out on the picnic table and woke up to find the ravens had devoured my pile of ramen, pasta and granola bars. They’d even pecked through my graham cracker box. Luckily, the other campers were kind enough to share their food so I didn’t have to resort to nibbling white bread all weekend (thanks, guys).
The rest of the weekend we made s’mores, grilled hot dogs and steaks and went hiking around the south rim of the Canyon as well along the inside. I didn’t hike to the bottom (I vetoed that idea as soon as I heard it would take 12 hours to hike back out. Call me crazy, but the idea of climbing out of a giant hole in the desert in 100 degree weather just didn’t seem worth it for a few photos of a river and a cactus), but I did hike a few miles down.
I was pretty proud of myself for making it that far though, considering that the last time I tried to hike in the desert (a few weeks ago), I wound up with heat stroke and threw up on a boulder about half-way up the hillside (I’ll spare you the photos of that. You’re welcome.)
Anyway, what about you? Ever been to the Grand Canyon? And by the way, here’s a trivia question for ya: Do you have any idea how the Grand Canyon was formed? (Hint: ‘asteroid’ is not the answer. That was my genius guess, which received several strange looks and a laugh from the park ranger).
The erosion of Colorado River….
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