Navajo Bridge & the North Rim

 

(not sure why this is blurry)

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to hike the Grand Canyon rim to rim with this group.  I started training three weeks before.  It really wasn't enough but I did my best with the time I had.  We set off last Saturday from Rachel Willis's house.  She's my running buddy.  We hike with her brother Ben, his son James, his daughter Marianne, her friend Brigette, and Gary (Ben's father in law) was the driver.  He's hiked rim to rim many times and it was great hiking with him the last few weeks and having someone experienced there.  Ben and Marianne were also experienced rim to rim hikers.

After a lunch break in Flagstaff we headed north.  This was our stop at Navajo Bridge.  There's the bridge for driving and a bridge for walking. 

Look at that background!  Those are the Vermillion Cliffs behind me.  I have memories coming here when I worked at Jacob Lake Inn the summer of 2005.  So nostalgic!

This was looking down from the bridge.  Just stunning!  And that water was moving pretty fast too.  Just north of here is Lee's Ferry where a lot of rafts get started but we didn't see a single floating device all weekend.  The Grand Canyon North and South rim visitor centers closed the week before so we were there at the beginning of off season.  

Thankfully the weather was perfect! It got much colder a couple days later.  I live in such a beautiful state!

Here's where we camped near the entrance to the north rim.  It got nippy as the sun went down and was a low around 35 degrees at night.  My bum was called all night but warmers kept my feet warm.

Loving the fresh air and ponderosa pines!  Arizona has the most beautiful forests!  There must have been a fire a few years ago because some of the drive south of Jacob Lake had burnt forest.  It was strange having a view down to the vermillion cliffs.  Normally there's forest in the way from that drive.

Rachel and I shared a tent and she made some yummy soup we shared too.

I brought the cookers, Trader Joes corn chips, and homemade chocolate chip cookies.  It would have been nice to have a camp fire but the fire was only a ring of rocks, not a metal ring, and with the fire hazard we had to do without.

As usual the moon and stars were so pretty at night.  It was so windy, the wind blowing in the trees kept me up much of the night but we tried to have an early start to bed since we needed to be up early.  I went to bed around 8:30 and had broken sleep all night.  I ended up not being able to sleep past 3:30 which wasn't too bad since we had a 4:00am start anyway.

Wish I slept more and drank more, but not a terrible way to start the hike.  Such a pretty day!  I was surprised how fast it felt getting to the north rim in one day.