Bike riding the rim of the Grand Canyon

We had a wonderful breakfast together then parted ways, with Patty and Alan headed for a photo-taking day, and Ned and I ready to bike the rim of the Grand Canyon. We did a quick lap of the Visitor's Center, asked the ranger some questions and then headed out for our adventure. We decided to take the bus to the first stop on the Hermit Road rather than tackling the 6% grade. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in the mid 70s and perfect for a bike ride. To say that it was amazing is quite simply an understatement. It was hard for me to wrap my brain around the endless expanse and deep chasms. To continuously bike alongside this view for over 10 miles is an experience I'll never forget. In addition to the over the top views, we also really enjoyed meeting all the international visitors along the way. One of our favorite families was this sweet young couple from Quebec with their 9 month old baby. We had so much fun exchanging stories of how much we enjoyed visiting their city and hearing about their time experiencing the wild west. At every stop along the ride we were greeted with Italian, French, German and Chinese. How wonderful to share this common experience regardless of our nationality. It's days like these that you really do feel like we are all one sharing in nature's beauty. We met up with Alan and Patty at Bright Angel Lodge in the late afternoon and decided to have an upscale dinner at one of the myriad of lodges. We settled upon El Tovar, the grand old lodge on the rim. We wanted to make sure to have dinner over in time for the sunset over the canyon. I'm whipping off this quick blog waiting for the sun to set, with my belly full of salmon, exhausted from a good bike and fully appreciating how blessed I am. Click here for pics Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:The Grand Canyon, Az

High on Zion

I stayed up past midnight trying to get the pics uploaded and the blog posted only to have the entire thing disappear. Ned was a real trooper and hung in there with me. We finally went to bed, but I got up before 6 and decided to just rewrite the whole thing and try again. (Not before firing off a nastygram to the developers grrr.) After writing this for a third time, it was once again removed. Here's the link if you want to see the Las Vegas crawdads feast. Click here for Las Vegas pics Patty was up early as well and together we rode our bikes to the visitor center in search of better wifi or 3G connection. The first pic of the day is Patty capturing me in early am blogging mode. (I do realize that I'm a sick techie junkie.) After I got the kinks worked out we all had breakfast together and wrote postcards. Our campsite was located on the Virgin River and it was so peaceful relaxing in the sun and listening to the rush of the river. We spent the rest of the morning at the Visitor's Center, the History Museum, shooting more pictures and visiting the Weeping Wall. Patty particularly loved the 4000 year old water seeping out of the sandstone walls. She was determined to drink it, but we talked her out of it. For those of you who know Patty you will appreciate this. Before we climbed out of the park we had a picnic lunch under a grove of cottonwood trees loaded with caterpillars. Well they sure loved us, especially Ned. At least 15 caterpillars dropped on him and were crawling down his shirt and up his pants. It was a pretty funny sight to see Mr. Mellow drop his pants in front of the children's museum to extract a particularly determined caterpillar that had crawled up to his knee. I'm still cracking up! I was so sure he was going to be arrested for indecent exposure. We hightailed it outta there pretty fast. Almost every year we travel thru Zion on our road trips. We consider this our annual pilgrimage and Zion has a special place in our heart. I don't think it's possible to take a bad picture in this park. Enjoy today's pics We had a 5 hour or so drive to the Grand Canyon and really had a blast stopping repeatedly to take pics and check out the Wild West scenery. It definitely felt like we were in a John Wayne movie. I kept expecting the Indians or Calvary to appear on top of the red mesas. After exploring the different views along the Grand Canyon rim we finally arrived at our campsite at about 7. We had a great time gathered around the fire telling stories and drinking wine. - Posted using BlogPress from my