San Francisco to The Grand Canyon

So, Floyd turned up thankfully to take us to Prescott Arizona, but not before we had to bid farewell to Phoenix and Tinkerbell. Without them we would have never extended our adventure to the West Coast, it was most definitely fate that brought us together, and i believe we will see each other again sometime in the future.

Before we said goodbye, they took us on a daytrip to Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco, and a Mecca for surfers and wildlife. At one point we counted 12 Pelicans flying in a row over the surfers heads. I have never seen bigger waves, and we were mesmerised by the skill of the surfers as they rode the waves towards shore for what seemed an eternity. On the pier, we were pleasantly surprised by the sound of Sealions barking below us, sunning themselves on the beams.

Next day, we drove South again to the central California coast, took the 17 mile drive along the coast at Monterey where again we saw lots more wildlife. I have always wanted to see Sea Otters in the wild. I thought I was going to have to spend a week in Scotland sitting in the rain, for a slight chance to spot one, but like most things on this trip, just when you least expect it, along comes another breathtaking moment. It came in the form of 4 sea otters, swimming on their backs just in the bay below us, feeding and playing in the surf. The coast here is beautiful, with high cliffs and the Santa Lucia Mountains rising up right by the sea.

Floyd arrived on a Saturday night, we caught up in a late night diner, then tried to get some sleep before Floyds first time in San Francisco, and an epic whirl wind tour of the city.
We started out on Market Street downtown, then headed to Haight and Ashbury (famous for its role as the centre of the Hippie movement!) on our way to Golden Gate Park. We had visited the park a day earlier with Tink and Phoenix, and it was buzzing with life, with people chilling out on the grass listening to live 'improvised' music. No such luck on Sunday, as the weather was taking a slight turn for the worst with a storm on the way. Golden Gate park is massive, bigger than Central Park in New York, and we had no hope of seeing it all. There are museums, art galleries, sport facilities, botanic gardens, world gardens, and that's just what we saw.

We cracked on towards pier 39 and Floyds first view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. After spotting some sea lions, we headed up towards Chinatown, one last Hookah bar visit then back to the hotel. In the morning, in the midst of the storm, we headed towards Prescott Arizona, with a slight detour via the suburbs of Los Angeles (unplanned), and 17 hours later (!), we were there, (For those of you who may not remember, we met Floyd in Maine on about day 4 of our hike South from Katahdin, then again in Caratunk, then again in Raleigh, then Vegas, and now Arizona, phew! He refuses to buy a GPS).

Our agenda has been relaxation, seeing the local area, preparing for our flight to Atlanta and eventually home and the real world (Sh!t), and Floyd through in an added bonus for us, The Grand Canyon, which happens to be just 2 hours away. We thought we had missed our chance, when heavy snow closed the roads on Friday. But with a better forecast for Sunday we took a risk and headed North to the canyon, got a hotel, and drove up the rim before sunset. This is an experience I will never forget, and the pinnacle of our trip. The South rim sits at around 7,000 feet above sea level, and the canyon has been eroded away by the Colorado river, now far below, a process which is estimated to have started 17 million years ago.

We took a free shuttle to Mather point, then hiked about half a mile around the rim to Yavapai. Normally this wouldn't take us long, but we took the challenge hiking in snow up to our knees, and created our own path to the viewing point at Yavapai, then back on the shuttle to Bright Angel.

We decided to start out early down the Bright Angel trail, which is a series of tight switchbacks leading down into the canyon. We were heading for Plateau point, and a drop in elevation of just over 3000 feet, just to get a closer look of the Colorado river. The trail was deep in snow to begin with, but as we dropped elevation into the insulated sun drenched canyon we soon warmed up, shedded some layers, and made it to Indian Gardens where we stopped for lunch. We hiked out to the Plateau, and i was amazed how big and powerful the Colorado river was, it looked like a stream from the edge of the rim, and ran red with the eroded soil. The experience of viewing the Canyon from the rim is very different from actually getting into, and i'm glad we did it at a time less people tend to visit. I don't know why, i think we caught it at its best. Temperatures on the Plateau reached 60F, and would have been even warmer at the rivers edge. In summer, temperatures can exceed 100F, due to the same insulating factors that led us to shed some layers and enjoy the sun. We hiked out and reached the rim at sunset, and watched the canyon walls turn more and more red as the sun set, and we rose out onto the rim. We celebrated a great day with a pint of Fat Tire (crackin beer by the way) then home to Prescott.

We are spending our last night here in Prescott, and will be sad to leave Floyd, but hopefully it will not be the last time we see him. As i write i can hear him listening to Quadrophenia by 'The Who', which we listened to on our drive home from the Canyon, and i swear it will always remind me of this special day. I would love to return to the Canyon again someday, there is so much to see and do, who knows.

Tomorrow we fly to Atlanta, and we intend to explore the city until Friday when we return home to start another new adventure...