4-16-09
We had originally planned on getting up early – really early…. like 5:00 am early for sunrise at the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately (0r fortunately depending on which way you are looking at it), it was overcast when we looked out the window at 5 am. So we slept in until around 7:00. I had read great things about the breakfast at the restaurant in our lodge, the El Tovar, so we decided to give it a try. Well to make a long story short we waited for 45 minutes and never got service. We ordered a hot chocolate and coffee when we initially sat down and received that, but our actual server never came around. After waiting this long we just wanted to pay for our drinks and leave, but despite asking several people if we could just get our check, pay, and leave, no one would help us out. Eventually we had to get the manager involved just to be able to get out of there!!! By this point it was almost 9:00. We were hungry and frustrated at our terrible service (or lack thereof). Luckily, we found a coffee shop at the Bright Angel Lodge nearby and just had a light and quick breakfast before catching the Hermit’s Road shuttle bus. Hermit Road is closed to private vehicles, so basically you have to take the shuttle to get to the viewpoints along this road. It turned out to be a sunny day (despite still being pretty chilly) and Mike took some great pictures.
The shuttle bus comes by about every 15 minutes, so every time we got off at a lookout we had to stay until the next bus came or walk to the next stop. There are 9 stops in total, so going to each lookout took most of the morning. By the time we were done with all of the stops we were ready for lunch. We opted to eat in the Arizona Room at the Bright Angel lodge again (same place we had dinner the night before). The lunch – and service – was good! After our lunch we were filling pretty full so we decided to make our way back to our room for a little bit. Mike wanted to try to check his work email. While he was doing this I fell asleep. About an hour later I woke up and realized Mike had fallen asleep too!!! At this point it was around 3:00 in the afternoon and we decided if we were going to try to do any hiking down in to the canyon then we better get started!!! We took the shuttle (well actually two different shuttles) to the South Kaibab trailhead. This is a popular trail into the canyon because it gives you good views in the shortest amount of trail length, but that means that the trail is steeper than some of the other nearby choices. We knew from our hike in Zion that hiking uphill is a much greater challenge then going down, so we decided to only hike down about 1/2 mile before turning around to go back up. We did get some nice views though!
We were happy that we made that decision, because by the time we made it back to the rim there were some dark clouds starting to roll in. We decided to take the shuttle to a couple of different stops to get sunset pictures. At first we thought we might luck out and get a clear sunset, but as the sun got lower and lower the clouds got closer and closer. And of course the temperature also got lower and lower! It did make for some pretty interesting pictures though!
As soon as the sun set we took the shuttle back to our hotel. As soon as we were walking up to the hotel the snow really started to come down! We decided to keep our 9:00 dinner reservations at the El Tovar restaurant. We blamed our breakfast experience on one particular server and decided to give the restaurant itself another whirl. Since we had some time before our reservations we got a glass of wine and walked around the lobby area and the mezzanine area where there was a woman playing the piano. It was a great way to relax after a long day!
Dinner turned out to be a great experience and we were glad we gave the restaurant a second chance. I got the New York strip and Mike got the prime rib special. Both were excellent. After dinner we called it an early night (again) and went to bed!
Tags: Out West 2009
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