Days 21 – 22 (September 8 – 10, 2015)

In the morning we saw that tire (front, right) was near empty. Original plan was Monument Valley & Zion National park before accommodate in Yavapai Lodge at Grand Canyon but it seemed to sliding out. I still tried to save our plan and I went to local workshop to fix the leakage.

 

 

Because leaking was still quite slow we decided to drive Hertz in Flagstaff carefully and continue straight to Grand Canyon after that. There in Hertz we agreed to leave our Camaro and received (temporary) Dodge Charger. They promised to have new car from Adrenaline collection in Vegas. Feeling was near same like baby after somebody took a toy from his hand. Bit compensation was that there was a Sirius radio where we found Elvis broadcast (24/7 from Graceland). We really enjoyed. Great music, some historical Elvis interviews, a lot of new details about his life and some panels. One memorable panel was that some invited experts talked an hour (the whole hour!) with a journalist about the legendary clause: ”Elvis has left the building”. When and who was said it first time(?), different versions were played, *dialog ”what’s meaning of this legendary clause for human race”, etc. They also played several samples from end of concerts. We had so much fun to listen that all – so, much that it was time to time difficult to keep our Dodge on a safe direction.

*) That one I dramatized as I do sometimes, sorry about it.

Anyhow, we arrived early enough to see sunset on the South rim of Grand Canyon. After that we just made needed preparations for next day hiking and sweet dreams…

We woke up very early in the morning (5.30am) in the focus to avoid sun burning as many hours as possible. It’s also well known that sunrise and sunset are very special there to see walls in different colors on several lights and shades.

Hiking down to the Colorado river and back in a day, was one of our ”must to do” action when we planned this road trip. It was done once before and our parents were in a same hiking group with us (1991). We made now a challenge for ourselves to show that our condition is in a same level as we had 24 years ago.

It was hard day, near 40 km to walk from Yavapai lodge to rim, down to river, back to rim and finally back to Yavapai lodge. We used near entire daylight time to do it. It’s not only a level change (about 1600m) or distance to make it so hard. There was 30 degr. C on the Rim and 36C on the river. My drank liquid 5 liter during the day.

text, video and photos will be added later…

 

 

 

Video will be added here…