Day 6: South Rim Grand Canyon

-7am
Wakeup. Last night it was supposed to hit 12 degrees, but wound up being kinda warm in the tent. Meat Machine’s thermometer read 29 degrees this morning, which I think was actually right. This is by far the most sleep we’ve gotten in one night, but somehow both air mattresses have multiple holes in them

-7:20pm
Mather Campground Showers. This is the first time we have showered since being in Breckenridge, 4 days without a shower might not seem super terrible, but when you’re hiking, making fires, riding longboards, and eating some interesting foods 4 days without a shower seems like a crime. The National Park charges $2 for 8 minutes of shower time in their campground, and this was basically the best 8 minutes of the trip so far

-8:14am
Grabbed some breakfast next to the Grand Canyon Visitor’s center. Nothing besides this dinky cafe is open before 9am, and it’s pretty damn cold outside. Eating in the car seems to be a common theme for us at this point

-8:42am
Left the National Park, and made our way to Tusayan, Arizona where we were scheduled for a 10am helicopter ride of the grand canyon

-9:13am
Detour to a McDonalds to hop on some free WiFi to upload yesterday’s blog. The park and surrounding area have zero service, but I do it for my fans

-9:30am
Blog upload done, arrived at the airport to check-in for our flight. The helicopter seats 8 people including the pilot, but I’m almost confident the heli is only designed for 6 people, so every pound counts. This meant that before we could hop on board, we had to stand on a scale and get exact weights of each person on the flight, just to make sure we were safe during the flight

-10am
Takeoff. Holy. Crap.
Since we got in so late last night, we didn’t see a single part of the grand canyon on our drive in, nor did we see any of it this morning on our drive to the airport. AKA my first time ever seeing the Grand Canyon, and really getting a sense for how freaking big it was, was by means of a helicopter flight. This place is unreal. I ripped a bunch of pictures, but honestly none of them do this place justice. I think it’s one of those places you just gotta see. Here’s a video from the helicopter of when we flew over the rim of the canyon and I saw it for the first time ever. I’ll also drop in another phone video, and some pics below. This place is massive

-11am
Back in the car, headed back into the park to prepare for our mega hike of the day

-12:35pm
Arrived at the Grandview Point trail head. The plan for the day was to depend about 2,000 vertical feet into the Canyon and check out what was going on down there. Our version of the hike would take about 5-6 hours round trip, and it was a little cold at about 45 degrees. After about 25 minutes and 100 vertical feet, the trail was already super steep and covered with ice, but we kept on going. Until… We ran into some hikers coming back up the trail (these people were super prepared with poles and backpacks and tents, meanwhile we are wearing Nike’s and backwards hats) and these people told us not to go any further because the trail was super sketchy. Neither of us have a death wish, so we turned around and headed for the car

-1pm
Walked down the South Rim trail. This trail is paved, a ton of old people use it, and it only hugs the top of the canyon, you don’t actually go down into the beast. We ripped a bunch of photos along this trail, and then of course hopped over the ropes to get some sick pics closer to the edge

-2:30pm
Grand Canyon Market Plaza General Store. This shop is located inside the park, and is an ultra tourist trap. Snagged a super touristy t-shirt and was on my way

-3pm
Starbucks, Tusayan, Arizona. This is the town with the Mickey D’s in it. We stopped in to grab some food, work on the blog, edit photos, and make some videos. We’re both super nerds, so some internet was needed after a couple days of not having it. Hopefully this won’t take too long, but Greg’s somehow managed to take 1.5 hours to make a video that really should’ve taken 20min…

-5:30pm
Back at the campsite inside of the National Park. This is by far the earliest we have been at a campsite, and it feels pretty good to be set up and eating dinner when it’s still kinda light outside. For now we’re just grilling and hanging out, hoping its not gonna get that cold tonight

-10:30pm
It’s starting to get pretty cold, we’ve used up all of our firewood, and it’s basically bed time. The stars are out in full force again and look incredible, definitely gonna miss that. Tomorrow we are headed for Albuquerque, NM by way of roads thru the Hopi Indian Reservation. Depending on this night’s sleep, tomorrow might turn into a hotel-style campsite. Deflated air mattresses can only be slept on so many times…

-French out