Grand 5

I was so proud of the fire we made the last night! Props to Grace. We cut up a bunch of potatoes, mixed in some butter, jerky, cheese, salt, and pepper, threw them onto the first for 40 minutes, and pow, potates!

Look at our trunk! We packed this car so beautifully, imo. Some time in Nebraska we ended up with enough space to actually see through the back for a while! That was great. 

Here's the canyon from the top, which is pretty funky. Like, there's a giant canyon in the ground. 

Red rocks!! All about the red rocks. 

The bottom of this cloud looked redish because of reflecting off the red rocks we think.

On the road againnnnnnn

You don't realize how amazing it is to see mountains everywhere until you get back to your boring mid west landscapes whomp whomp. 

We overnighted in Moab, Utah and had an amazing two-hour long rafting adventure. We paddled on a 10-person boat through a couple of rapids. The funnest part was floating through a rapid outside of the boat. The weather was fantastic and our river guide was really fun. We crashed in a hotel in Sterling, Colorado I think, then spend the last day driving to Minneapolis! We arrived at Heller's house around 8 pm with enough time to shower and eat some warm food before catching the Megabus back to Madison.

What a great summer of road trips!

And now I'm back! I worked that same Monday afternoon and started professional development at Kromrey Middle School Tuesday through Thursday. Can't believe the semester is right around the corner, but I'm really excited. It's a different kind of busy, but my classes seem fun, my job is still rocking, I'm really into working with my cooperating teacher, and I'll be getting experience teaching 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades!

Grand 4

Thursday was our last full day at the park so we fit in all the miscellaneous places we wanted to visit.

Found this cool cemetery on the walk from the campgrounds to the shuttle. The earliest grave I found was from someone born in 1799 !!

One of the highlights of the day was walking the Trail of Time. Each large step signifies 100 million years of history or something and is designated by a little plate in the ground and along the way they've included chunks of rock from each era/layer of the canyon. One had some cool trilobites fossils.

Walking 'off-road' along the rim was a must-do whenever we could.

Ran into this little guy along the way and I caught this shot of her looking right at me!

I never got tired of looking at rocks.

Emily looks dead

Hiking AND learning!

All in all, we walked from Yavapai Point to Hermit's Rest during our four days. Your perspective is always distorted because I feel you can't fully understand how big the area is. 

Here's a zoom out of the 3D map of the canyon. 

The Geology Museum was really cool! It was originally built because it had some of the best views of the Canyon and was used as a scientific research station back in the day. We learned about the formation of the Canyon starting from an era where North America was down by the Equator. Then we walked over to the Grand Canyon Visitor Center and picked up Junior Ranger Booklets, which were super fun to fill out. We also watched a really majestic short film called Journey to Wonder where we saw clips from the earliest explorers to sail down the Colorado. Their wooden boats would bump back and forth against all the rocks, I can't believe anyone survived it!

This squirrel was contemplating it's life on that edge for a while. 

The Park Rangers said that Hopi Point was the best spot to watch a sunset over the canyon so there we headed.  One activity in the junior ranger book was to sit in silence at the canyon for ten minutes and write your thoughts. We asked Ranger Eric some questions about the river and got him to sign our ranger books. 

Straight up chilling

Maggie was excited to become a junior ranger! ...Grace not quite so much. 

There's the Colorado River way down there. 

Grand 3

I really needed this vacation because I had a rough couple of days the previous week at work involving lots of heavy lifting and table moving. My favorite bruise was this puppy from walking side-on into a wheeled cart. Whoops. 

Two weeks later, just starting to brown. Cool!

The bench at the shuttle stop had some impromptu horse art.

This morning we woke up to a 12 point buck hanging out near our campsite. He was using his antlers to lodge into low branches and swinging his head back and forth to break off the branch and eat the leaves. His antlers were enormous! We watched him for twenty minutes probably.

We wanted to get to an early start because this was the day of our below the rim hike. We chose the Bright Angel Trail and walked down to the 3-mile rest stop. The way down was a good 3 times faster than the way back up. We saw some mules working, Grace got made fun of by a cowboy (twice), met lots of cool people, and watched a lightning storm in the distance near the end of it.

It's so steep, the path zigs back and forth. Most of it is loosely pathed out, but there's still some fun rock climbing and sliding.

MULE.

The landscape changes the lower you get and it was so wicked to see the rocks up close and from different angles. Water breaks meant camera breaks. Stay hydrated!

This area reminded us of the Land Before Time. It basically is. 

Seriously, so cool. 

Post-6-mile hike shot!!! Let's just say we were sweaty. 

Proud hikers!

We had absolute perfect timing with the weather. It started to drizzle as soon as we were on the shuttle back to the campgrounds. We decided to wait out the storm at the lodge and chilled there with some magazines and naps for a couple hours. For dinner we made really good beans and tortilla soup and played old card games, which was a lot of fun.  #elkproblems also started.

Grand 2

Yes yes, driving is all fine and dandy, but here begins shots of the canyon. Now, I want to preface basically every single picture by saying the digital camera in no way fully captures the depth and beauty and extremes of the Grand Canyon. I think I took less than four shots at sunset before just giving up because it couldn't be captured as beautiful as real life. 

But I still took lots of pictures! We stayed at Mather Campground which I thought was a perfect balance between roughing it (no electrical lights, tent) and amenities (bathroom, potable water). Free shuttle transport was a short walk away and the busses took you nearly anywhere along the rim that was hikable in the vicinity. Our first day we walked along the rim from Mohave Point to Hermits Rest.

This picture's giving me some retroactive vertigo

Some Pride Rock reenacting with Henry the sloth.

I had to do it, Canyon Selfie. But now I've proved I was there!

That coffee press was the most invaluable aspect of every morning, let me tell ya. Heller brought a little propane stove so we could make eggs and toast, grilled sandwiches and coffee.

Cute candid shot of Grace & Emily

Old school Instagram- an actual photo of my food! Sorry, but I was just really proud of our grilled cheeses.

After hiking in the morning, I read at our picnic table in the sun for a couple of hours. It was so pleasant out, no where near as warm as it has apparently been in Wisconsin. There was a  General Store near by where we picked up some fire wood for marshmellow melting. 

Grand 1

In case you didn't know, I went to the Grand Canyon recently! My friend Heller wanted to visit the National Park so she booked a camping site on the South Rim for a couple of days and next thing you know me and her two roommates are driving to Arizona!  It takes about 23 hours to drive there from Madison. Our game plan was to leave early in the morning (~7 am) Sunday, overnight in Denver, and get to Grand Canyon National Park Monday night. I condensed our first two days of driving into this one post since we really couldn't do much else. 

Leaving Madison we were caffeinated and ready to roll. Iowa was actually kind of pleasant and we wished we had made time to pit stop with our Paper Back Rhino improv friends. Nebraska was endless. I spent the first half of Nebraska wishing I was still in Iowa and the second half wishing I was in Colorado already. Spotting our first hills/mountains/bumps was exciting!

Driving across America is basically this for a while. Plan your rest stops accordingly

I very much enjoyed Heller's mom's car! It had a six-disc CD player and was pretty spacious for four girls. 

Driving with the sunroof down on a warm day is the best

'sup

Maggie has blue-removing sunglasses so I had to take a picture through them

We must be getting closer to Arizona!

So many plateaus.

WEIRD ROCK FORMATIONS!

I can see for miles and miles and 

The black line is what we traveled IN ONE DAY

Denver was a really cool city. Our hotel was quite nice (valet service) even though we weren't breaking the bank. We walked around downtown in the morning to get some Caribou Coffee, play an outdoor piano, and make fun of the Harley Davidson convention. The highlight of day two was definitely seeing the Four Corners. My brother made me promise to go and stand in four states at once and I totally agree. It was so cool. It's surrounded by Navajo tribe stands and has amazing 360˚ views.

One pair of feet per state

at the Four Corners

We spotted some fellow Wisconsinites in the parking lot! Throughout the trip we had 3 or 4 Badger shout outs. I think at least one of us wore something UW each day of the trip ;]

U-Rah-Rah

This night had one of the coolest sun sets of my life, since we drove right through it and there was literally nothing obstructing out view. I was the 4th shift driver so got to drive in Grand Canyon National Park. It's at least 27 miles from turning off the high way to getting anywhere near the park grounds and lots and lots of hills. We saw a coyote crossing the road and some elk in the woods.