Grand Canyon to Flagstaff

My goal was that on this day I'd do a hike down to the grand canyon and then start driving towards flagstaff, AZ. I got a nice and early start and drove down to the Grand Canyon visitor center. From there I found about the options for different hikes. The one that I found that suited my schedule was about 10km hike with a recommendation of 4-6 hours to do it. I actually really wanted to hike all the way down to the river, but it was very strongly recommended not to do it as a one day hike due to the high elevation. It would’ve been about 22km hike. I took the shuttle bus provided from the visitor center to the starting point of the hike. I had  chance on the previous day to check out the sunset over the Grand Canyon but I still had only seen one viewpoint of it. So the moment I got my first sights of the canyon were as it would’ve been the first time. Just pure awesomeness in a form of a view! The trail I started following was called the “South Kaibab Trail”. It stretched all the way down to the river, but you could do also shorter distances of the trail. 

The trail itself was pretty much struck to the hill with a constant drop off right from the trail. And it was steep as well! The scenery that the trail offered was definitely first class. The first time I saw the full view was from the “Ooh Aah Point” which got it’s name pretty much from the reaction of people when they come to it.  I continued all the way to the “Skeleton Point” which is the first point on the trail from where you can see the river in the canyon. This was also my turning point to start hiking up. It was said that whatever time you spend going down you should double when climbing back up. The moment I turned to start the climbing I found this urge inside of me that I really would’ve wanted to continue to the bottom of the canyon.. ‘sigh’ ..next time.

The Climb up didn’t actually take that long of me and I reached back up in a total of 3,5 hours of hiking down and up. I must say that walking uphill for 5 km (3mi) in 30’C (90’F) was something I started to feel in both my legs and body by the time I reached up.

I caught the shuttle back to the visitor center with a feeling that I had seen Grand Canyon and could continue with a good feeling.

I started driving from the visitor center and on the way decided to do a little detour. Marketa on the previous night was highly speaking about this quaint little town right south of Flagstaff called Sedona so I decided to go and take a look how it was. Since it was only about 1,5 hours away anyway.  It did get dark on my way there so I decided to stop by in Flagstaff and do something I hadn’t done for awhile: a movie night! I found the movie theater and took whatever two movies that were available at that time. Which ended up being the “Hotel Transylvania” and the “Looper”. My thirst for entertainment was filled after seeing these two movies and I continued to drive down to Sedona. I wanted to stay in the car for that night and I had heard that there were big “energy centers” or “natural vortexes” in the area. So I thought that I might as well go and overnight there. See if I can balance myself.. ;) After awhile I did find the “Bell Rock” and overnighted right by it.