The Adventures of Andrew Maurer

We had planned to get up at 4am, giving us enough time to hike down to the Colorado river and back up to the campsite before 10am. Unfortunately Katie’s phone died during the night, so we didn’t wake up till 5:15am. Our stomachs weren’t feeling so well because of all the peanut butter, so we decided to call it good enough and skip the descent to the Colorado river (it was pretty ugly and brown anyways). We breakfasted on some peanut butter, packed up tent, and started the return back. It was beautiful hiking before the sunset, and as we were hiking we saw the sky lighten as the sun rose. We were lucky that for the majority of the hike up we were in the shade. But as we hiked higher, the sun penetrated lower.

These are a few more shots from our viewpoint yesterday. What a beautiful place!

We saw our first mule train heading down before sunrise. I’d hazard a guess that the mules wouldn’t be particularly fond of the Grand Canyon midday heat. Katie was counting how many mule trains we saw, but I lost count. I think we heard 1 and saw 3. Though I could be wrong.

We had our last snack stop at the 1.5 mile mark from the rim. There were some very friendly squirrels who were harassing Katie. I wouldn’t have it, so I distracted them with sunflower seeds.

Not much of note for the rest of the day. We got back to the rim – huffing, puffing, and sweating. I figured it would be fun to step it up a notch for the last 1.5 miles and we made amazing time. We ascended in about the same time we descended. We started driving back, our car broke down, the usual. After some hassle, some stress, some gas station attendents, some oil, a tow-truck driver, and some more stress, we ended up sleeping in the car outside a mechanic’s shop in Kingman, Arizona. With bellies full and 15 quarts of oil from the Walmart, we were ready to crash.