Grand Canyon / Vegas Trip

10/6/2006 - 10/11/2006

Preface

This trip was planned a few months ago, but about two weeks before we left, Dave and I got drunk one night and bought plane tickets to Europe. I'm writing this the weekend after we got back, and about two weeks before we leave for Frankfurt. The trip was spectacular, but I'm having a hard time focusing on it with the big trip coming up. Also, I let Dr. Noor know that I'm sticking around until fall to try to get into UU or UC Davis -- perhaps a bad idea, but hopefully I'll be able to pay off some of this next trip before I go back to school

Friday, 10/6/2006 -- Vegas Bound

Neither Dave nor I woke up for our early-morning flight, but luckily Chrissy was taking us to the airport and managed to get up on time and wake us up (~4:00am, after going to sleep at 2:00am). There was a noreaster coming through, and it was pouring rain. I was soaked just dashing from the apartment to Chrissy's jeep. I also didn't think far enough ahead to pack a jacket in carry-on, so the plane ride was a little cold.

We arrived at Newport News airport in plenty of time. I didn't want any hassle, so I told the lady at the baggage check counter that I had an empty fuel bottle in my pack. I shouldn't have, as she informed me that I couldn't take it if it had ever been used before. She was nice enough to keep it for me, and told me that I could get it back when I returned, but I was still left with a stove and no fuel bottle. It should also be mentioned that I had gone out and bought the stove and fuel bottle the day before, as the one I had ordered online had been shipped to my old address and returned to sender -- just the beginning of the problems I'd have trying to get a hot cup of coffee in the morning.

The trip to Vegas was pretty uneventful, stopping in Charlotte on the way. I slept most of the trip. There was a bizzare-looking documentary on the flight into Vegas, but I didn't have headphones, so couldn't really tell what it was about. We did get to see the Grand Canyon from the air, though, which was really neat -- a giant rip in the earth.

When we arrived in Vegas we met Carla, Dave's sister, at the rental car desk. She was short, cute, and well-dressed. She turned out to be really nice and easy to talk to, and I learned a lot about peace corps and her experiences in Costa Rica, which she had returned from about a year ago. She now worked for an organization helping refugees, and she worked with survivors of torture. She's planning on going back to school in the fall, probably for some type of international project management.

We picked up the car (a little hyundai that went into overdrive every time we went uphill), and started heading out of town under Dave's general guidance ("just go this direction...we'll hit an interstate eventually"). We were all starving, so we stopped for lunch at a Cuban resturaunt. I had a Media Noche sandwich, which is a cuban with a different type of bread, and Dave had 'Old Clothes', which I tried and was thoroughly impressed by.

We set out again, and after getting a little lost in a small town, made it to the Hoover Dam. we got out and checked it out, which was pretty neat. The water in the resivoir was a spectacular blue-green.

Driving through the desert is always interesting, with the bare mountains and small scrubs. As we got closer to the canyon the landscape became more wooded, with small windswept trees. We passed the time by quizzing each other on GRE words, as I'd just taken the GRE and Dave and Carla were planning on taking it soon. We stopped just before the park and gathered firewood, as we were allowed to pick up wood in the national forrest surrounding the park, but not in the park itsself. The area was pretty picked over, but we managed to fill the trunk with wood.

We got to the campsite around dark, checked in, and went to the grocery store at the park. It was amazingly well-stocked, and not too pricey. I picked up a fuel bottle and some fuel for my stove (not to mention beer), and we got hot dogs, bread, and a roasted chicken, and went back to the campsite to start a fire. It had rained recently, and the wood we picked up was pretty wet. I had been planning on starting my camp stove to light some small wood to get the fire going, but as soon as I started pumping the fuel pump, it popped apart on me. Closer inspection showed that a small plastic tab had broken, and I couldn't get it to keep a seal -- so much for all the trouble buying the second stove, the third fuel bottle, etc. -- so we had to start the fire with some coleman fuel and a lot of patience. It was pretty cold, and we were really happy when we finally got the fire going. It had gotten pretty late, and we all ate and crashed out.

Saturday, 10/7/2006 -- Around the Rim

When I woke up it was light out, and I kept hearing birds screeching. I got out of my tent to find that I had left one of the two bags of hiking food out, and a congress (yes, that's the correct word) of ravens had torn apart every bit of food in it. I got up and started picking up the trash, only to turn around and find a group of large elk-like animals right behind our tents. I got Dave and Carla up, and we took some pictures. They had strange straight horns, and looked a little more mooselike than elk, and even now I'm not entirely sure what they were.

We got things together as fast as we could, and set out for the backcountry office to get a backcountry pass for camping down at the Colorado River. (As a side note, the term 'backcountry' is utterly misleading. The backcountry passes are issued for campsites in the designated campgrounds in the park, and camping anywhere else is prohibited.) Unfortunately, we didn't know where the backcountry office was, so we drove up to the Canyon Cafe (near the general store), and asked directions. Of course, none of us could remember the directions exactly, so we had to stop again and ask a ranger. Either he gave us incorrect directions, or I recounted them wrong, but we drove way out of our way before finally finding the office. There were already a lot of people in line, and camp sites were running out. A couple of guys asked about splitting a campsite, but by the time our turn came around there were no campsites at the bottom for the night, so we got one for the next night (Sunday night). We also asked about day hikes, and decided to hike a portion of the rim trail, around the edge of the canyon. We went back to the campsite, grabbed a little (cold) breakfast, and set out with minimal supplies. The hike was spectacular. I won't try to describe the canyon, if you haven't seen it I can't do it justice, and besides, we have plenty of pictures from the hike. We took our time, and ended up doing most of the hike out to Hermit's Refuge (or something like that) before catching the bus the last mile, checking out a very large stone fireplace, and heading back (via the bus). It was getting close to dark, and we had to go outside the park to get firewood again. We picked up the firewood, resupplied our hiking food (power- and cliff- bars and a large bag of self-mixed gorp, a jar of peanut butter, some tuna packs, and a loaf of bread), and got dinner again -- hot dogs and chicken again, but whiskey instead of beer for me -- the beer had made me cold the previous night -- and went back to light the fire. It went much better than the night before, and we ate and took turns going to get showers at the camper's facilities -- $1.50 for 5 minutes of water. They were also nice enough to loan towels, which I would have sorely missed. We were tired and knew we had a big day ahead, so we went to bed...after making sure to secure the food.

Sunday, 10/8/2006 -- Into the Canyon

I didn't sleep very well that night, the ground was hard and I was getting bruises on my hips trying to sleep on my side (my back still bothers me some from my climbing fall, and I can't sleep on my back very well). We needed to catch the bus by 8:00 at the backcountry office, so we got up, ate another cold breakfast, broke camp, checked out, and went to the backcountry office. I made some quick peanut butter half-sandwiches for Dave and Carla while we waited for the bus (and I managed to cut my tounge licking my pocket knife), and we weighed our packs on a scale there. Dave and my packs were close to the same weight, around 45lbs, and Carla's was ~30lbs, though one of the other hikers though the scale was about four pounds heavy.

We got on the bus and left for the South Kaibab Trail (not sure what Kaibab is, but the South and North Kaibab trails make a trail connecting the north and south rims of the canyon, and (at least on the south side) the national forest surrounding the Grand Canyon National Park is the Kaibab National Forrest.). It was pretty chilly still as we started down, but that wore off once we got moving.

Going into the canyon was amazing, watching the layers of rock change as we went down. We weren't on the trail more than fifteen minutes when Carla's water bottle fell out of its pocket and rolled a ways down a sheer slope. We weren't about to leave it, but it was quite a drop if we slipped (ie certainly fatal). Dave eventually managed to grab it using one of the hiking poles I had in my pack, and we set off again. We quizzed each other on words some more, and although we were hiking at a fairly good pace, we seemed to be lagging behind a lot of the other hikers, which surprised me. The trail was well maintained, though, and the views really surprised me. The canyon is spectacular from the rim, unreal almost, but all shades of brown, tan, or red-brown. In the canyon, for whatever reason, you realize that there's lots of greens, and bright reds and yellows.

Dave kept slipping and twisting his ankle, but never seriously injured himself, and the hike for the most part went smoothly. The weather was gorgeous, getting warmer as we went down (both because it was getting later in the day and because there's about a 20 degree increase in temperature between the rim and the Colorado River at the bottom due to the 5000+ ft elevation change), and clear. The way down turned out to be only about 6.5 miles, though it seemed longer and we were all ready to take our packs off by the time we got to the bottom. The inner gorge was, once again, amazing, colorful (deep red with lush green plants) and steep.

At one point we met a mule train coming up, and stepped to the inside of the trail to wait for it to pass. As it went by, though, the last mule suddenly reared back and snapped the rope tying it to the mule in front of it. It stood there trembling, at the edge of the trail, and the 'muleboy' leading the train had to come back and get it while admonishing it not to do "any damn-fool thing like go over the edge". It turned out that Dave had slipped while standing, and startled the mule. The mule was tied back to the train, though, and we continued down.

At the end of the trail, we went through a tunnel in the rocks and across the Colorado River on a suspension bridge (the one the mules could use, since it had a solid walkway they couldn't see through), and along the Colorado River to Bright Angel creek, and followed it up to the campsite. It had taken us about 4.5 hours to hike down, and we hadn't touched the two gallons of water in the Franzia bags Dave and I were carrying.

The campsite was nice, each was separated by thick shrubbery. The campsites were situated between Bright Angel Creek and a mini-canyon wall, in a long strip. The campground was two camsites wide, one bordering the creek and the other against the canyon wall, with the trail leading between them down to the bathrooms. I noticed that the vegetation separating the campsites was irrigated -- you could hear the spray from burried pipes as you walked along. Each campsite also had a strange metal pole which people used to hang their packs from, and which I later found was a replica of old telephone poles that brought a line down to Phantom Ranch (the ranch just up from the campsites). The line was on the National Register of Historic Locations, which I thought was pretty funny. There were also old ammo boxes to store our food in. We packed our food in the boxes, set up our tents, and made some tuna sandwiches. After eating it started to sprinkle, and we were all pretty tired, so we took a little siesta.

After waking up (I slept, I think Dave and Carla just rested for a while), we went to check out Phantom Ranch. You could rent a room there if you did it 13 months in advance, and there was a little resturaunt, but you needed reservations to get dinner. We were a little worried about our food situation, as we didn't bring much for dinner (just tuna and peanut butter), and were trying to save the hiking food for the hike out the next day. We had been told to plan on at least twice the time to hike out as to hike down, so we needed food for the whole next day. We talked with an older guy from Texas, who told us that the resturaunt opened up to everyone at 8:00pm, and normally sold beer and other stuff, but they were out of beer. I had a pretty bad headache from lack of caffiene at that point, and was just hoping to get some coffee. It was still only about 5:00, though, and after hanging out for a while we went back to the campsite.

We ate some more tuna and peanut butter, and Dave and Carla slept a bit more. I wandered around the campground, checked out the creek, and noticed that there was a ranger program at 7:30 at the ranch. Just before I left for it, though, Carla informed me that she'd seen a sign that it was canceled that night. We went up to the ranch anyway, as we wanted to be there at 8:00 in any case, and while there wasn't a ranger program, there was an older guy playing John Denver songs on a guitar, who we listened to for a while.

When the resturaunt opened up, we went in and I got a large coffee and a king-sized snickers bar, which alleviated my food worries. We hung out there, talking and reading parts of 'Death in the Grand Canyon', which detailed all the known deaths in the canyon, until they were about to close at 10:00. The place was very nice, and there was a nice native american guy waiting tables and running the cash register. He had a mohawk, which I had noticed, but Carla pointed out that the white guy working as a bus boy also had a mohawk, which she thought was strange. Before we left I bought a large decaf coffee to drink back at the campsite, and a small regular coffee, which I kept to drink the next morning and stave off another caffiene withdrawal headache.

The night was beautiful, and although it had looked like rain earlier, and they were predicting a 50% chance of rain the next day, the stars came out and were gorgeous, and then the full moon rose again, making it bright enough to walk to the restrooms without a flashlight.

I stayed up for a while after Dave and Carla went to bed, sipped my coffee and enjoyed the night. I finally got into my tent and took my shoes off, but my feet smelled so bad after the hike that I had to go to the creek and wash them before I could go to sleep. After i did that, though, sleep came quickly, and while the ground wasn't soft, I think it was better than up at the rim campsite.

Monday, Columbus Day, 10/9/2006 -- and out again

I knew we needed to get an early start hiking out, as we were anticipating it taking as much as 10 hours to get out, and we had to get the rental car back to Las Vegas by 11pm, which was about a four-hour drive away. I woke up at 5:30 and used the bathroom, but it was still completely dark out and I was exhausted, so I didn't wake Dave and Carla up, but just went back to sleep. I woke up and heard them (I thought) taking down their tent, and I looked at my watch, and it was 6:45. I got up and stuffed my sleeping bag into its stuff sack, and got out to start taking down the tent, but when I told Dave and Carla that, they laughed at me -- I forgot about the time difference, it was only 3:45, and they were only up because their rain fly had blown away. After a good laugh we went back to sleep, and I set my alarm for 6:00 (6:00 grand canyon time).

My alarm went off, and we got up, had peanut butter and pop tart sandwiches, and packed up and started hiking out (~7:30 by the time we left). It was pretty warm already in the sun, and I was a bit worried that it would get extremely hot on the hike out. We hadn't gone far when a guy jogging out passed us, which we all thought was a little strange. We hiked across the Bright Angel Bridge and along the south side of the Colorado for a while, finally turning up and following a stream away from the river. Some people who had just finished a rafting trip got out there, and started hiking out as well. We put up a pretty good pace, and I had planned on taking a break when we got out of the inner gorge. Since the Bright Angel trail followed a little creek, though, it was in a mini-canyon which cut slowly up into the center of the Grand Canyon. For this reason it was nice and shady, and not too steep, but we never reached the point where we were suddenly out of the inner gorge. We eventually came to Indian Gardens, which is the halfway point out of the canyon, and our first water break. We hadn't used any water at all at that point, and had made great time (I think it was ~9:30), so we rested and ate for a while, and then set out again. The trail got a bit more steep from that point on, and we kept having to stop to let mule riders go by on their way down. It also got significantly colder as we rose in elevation, and we noticed ourselves getting pretty chilly when we stopped. We really just kept pushing, though, and although we made a few more stops at rest areas and to see some bighorn sheep, we made it out by around 1:00, taking only 5.5 hours to hike out. The weather had held for us, and we hadn't been rained on at all, and in fact had quite a nice day to hike out.

We were a little turned around by that point, and it took us a while to hike out to the car, but we eventually found it. We had just made it to the parking lot when it began to hail on us. We first drove to the showers because I knew I smelled bad and didn't want to subject Dave and Carla to the smell on the drive back. We then drove up to the grocery store because Carla wanted to get some gifts, and Dave and I decided we should get Chrissy something for taking us to the airport and picking us up when we got back, but it took us a while to agree on something. 'Death in the Grand Canyon', Grand Canyon Wine, and Grand Canyon clothing were discussed, but in the end we got her a Grand Canyon Nalgene water bottle. I got a bananna and a coffee, and we left. We stopped at the first resturaunt we came to, a pizza and pasta joint, and pigged out on lasagnia and salad bar, and I got a PBR. We also got to listen to some locals discuss marajuana, one guy protesting that he wouldn't put up with 'headache weed'. We left, and I went to sleep while Carla drove so I could take over later on. We eventually did stop and switch, and I drove back over the Hoover Dam and into Las Vegas.

Coming into Las Vegas at night is pretty stunning, after driving through the empty desert suddenly you crest a hill and see all the lights before you. Everything has neon. With Dave navigating, I managed to find the Tropicana, where we had a room (thanks to Carla). We parked and checked in, and the lady at the front desk seemed to be hitting on Carla, and gave her a room upgrade. The room was really nice, with a wetbar in the living room and a separate bedroom. Dave and Carla took showers, and I unpacked a little. I hadn't really planned on being in Vegas for any period of time, and didn't have any clean clothes. I washed some clothes in the sink and set them out to dry, but had to go out in my 'mesquite' (as dave put it) clothing. Dave wanted to eat again, but we needed to clean the car out (it was really filthy from our camping gear and putting firewood in the trunk) and return it. We left Dave to get a shower, and Carla and I went to return the car. We cleaned it out, only getting hit up once for money while we vaccumed, and after circling the place a few times trying to figure out the one-way streets, returned the car and took a cab back to the Tropicana.

I cleaned up as best I could, and we went out to get some food. We were all tired, though, and Carla didn't want to walk anymore, and we were having a hard time finding somewhere open that wasn't fast food (which we all thought was strange in Vegas). Dave just ended up getting some fries, and we went back to the hotel. I wanted to go out still, though, and Dave decided he wanted to come too, so we went back out, and walked down the strip stopping at a mini-mart to get beers, and hung out in front of Bally's for a while just people-watching. I finished my beer, and we decided to keep walking, eventually making it down to the Venecian. We went inside, and the daytime outdoor scene inside really messed with my internal clock. We were both getting really tired by then (it was after 2:00am), and we hiked back to the hotel and crashed out.

Tuesday, 10/10/2006 -- Leaving Las Vegas

I had crashed out on the couch, and was woken up by the room's phone ringing. I got up a bit dazed and answered it, and a perfect female 'hotel staff' voice simply said that I was expected. It didn't make much sense to me, but I just said okay and hung up before I realized that I really had no idea what she meant. I went to tell Dave and Carla, but they weren't in the room. I got a call a few seconds later, it was Dave telling me it had been Carla before, and they were down getting breakfast. I went down and met them, and got some scrambled eggs and lox.

Carla had managed to get us a late checkout, so we still had a while before we had to leave. We packed our stuff, and I took a shower. I'd been eating mostly trail mix and peanut butter for the last few days, and was pretty plugged up. I was finally able to take a good shit, and plugged up the toilet. I called housekeeping, though, and they fixed it pretty quickly. Carla went to buy some souveneirs, and I went down to play slots a bit, just to say I'd gambled. I got $5 in quarters, and played for about 10 minutes, and ended up with $5 in quarters. For the first time, though, I could see how it would get addictive. I went back up to the room, and we just hung out until check out at 1:00, and I did my best to finish my bottle of whiskey from camping.

Carla's flight was at four, so she only had about an hour before she needed to head for the airport. Dave and I left our packs with the hotel, and carla kept hers with her, and we hiked down the strip. We went into the Bellagio, which was really cool, with lots of giant glass leaves and strange plantlike structures on the ceiling. Carla had to leave, so we got her a cab and I got her some cash (she still ended up paying far more than her share) and Dave and I kept walking down the strip. We went into Caesar's Palace, which had a huge selection of shops, and wandered around for quite a while looking at everything, including a really nice toy store, and some really bad anamatronics.

We were getting pretty hungry by that point, and I remembered seeing a mexican place that didn't seem too pricey, so we went back and got a seat. They had a 'Cantina Challenge', which was a 35oz burrito and a 48oz margarita. If you finished it, you got a t-shirt. It didn't take too much prodding on Dave's part for me to decide to take them up on the challenge. The burrito was gigantic, but the margarita they brought me was only a standard one -- at the time I thought that was just what came with the challenge. I managed to finish the burrito (well, I slipped a little to Dave), and asked if I had to finish the sides. The waitress said no, but that I had to drink a 48oz margarita. Apparently she thought I had just wanted the burrito, not the challenge, and so she'd given me a regular margarita. We argued about it a bit, but she just said she'd only charge me for the burrito and regular margarita, but give me a shirt anyway. I was okay with that, so I got the t-shirt, but Dave ordered a 48 oz margarita, and I think I ended up drinking more than half of it, which along with the margarita I'd already drank had to come out close to 48oz in any case.

I was feeling pretty sick after that, and Dave had a song he wanted to listen to on his laptop, so we sat down outside for a while. A scruffy-looking couple came up and tried to sell me Elton John tickets, which I was a little indignant about, both because they'd thought I was a mark and and Elton John fan. After my stomach settled a bit, we hiked down the strip farther, and found a Puma shop, where Dave bought a pretty cool jacket.

We still had a ton of time to kill, so I suggested going down to the Straosphere, as I'd never been to the top. We hiked down there, but it turned out to be a lot farther than I thought. We stopped by a head shop on the way, and Dave found some one-hitters he liked, but we didn't have any cash on us at the time. We got to the Stratosphere, but it was $14 to go to the top, so we decided just to head back. I got some cash, and we stopped by and got the one-hitter. We also stopped by Circus Circus, and played a bunch of ski ball at 9 balls for $0.25, which we were pretty amazed by. I stopped and got a beer to hike with, Stone Ruination IPA, 7.7% alcohol. We were really running pretty late then, so we hoofed it double-time back to the hotel. I started to call Chrissy to tell her when to pick us up, but realized I didn't know exactly when we were getting in, so we decided we'd just catch a cab back to the apartment. When we got to the hotel, we met a guy going to the airport at the same time, so we split a cab, and had no problems at security, so we made it to the terminal with an hour to spare. I just read 'The Brothers Karamazov', and got on the plane and went to sleep. My seatmates complained because I had the window seat, but I wasn't going to give it up, as I had to be back at work that morning.

The plane ride went uneventfully, I slept most of the way, and our layover was in Philly this time (very nice ariport, nice artwork). The leg back to Newport News was on a prop plane, and it was pretty neat to see the landing gear out the window. I got a really bad coffee at the airport, and managed to get my fuel bottle back, but our bag with our sleeping bags and Dave's tent didn't arrive, so we had to fill out a missing bag form. We caught a cab back to the apartment (~$25 after tip) with a driver who really wanted to talk to us, and had to take a bathroom break during the ride. Chrissy was there when we got in, and she informed us that she had gone to the airport at 5:00am to pick us up (apparently at some point we had told her that time), but she was pretty good natured about it. I took a shower and went to work -- quite an abrupt end to the vacation