Sept '11. That big crack in Earth.

Mike and I spontaneously ended up in the Grand Canyon. We could not have planned it better had we actually planned it. We followed a thunderstorm into the canyon. BEAUTIFUL.

Unfortunately, I'm not fast enough or a good enough photographer to capture any of the lightning, but it was fantastic.

We headed to the South Rim for our campsite.

After dark, we walked down to the Watchtower and watched the lightning flash across the canyon as the storm headed away. The next day, we headed back to the Watchtower. It would be pretty awesome to live in that thing.

Mike and I thought it would be an awesome idea to hike down Bright Angel trail 5 miles down to Indian Gardens...and then back up in the same day without eating. Talking about hurting!! Still super cool though.

The canyon is absolutely beautiful.

Made it to Indian Gardens!



Side note: You need a permit to camp overnight in Indian Gardens. We passed this group of kids heading back up the trail from the campsite, they'd hiked down late in the evening and stayed, got in trouble because they didn't have a permit and were fined, but this isn't what we cared about; what was hilarious was that this group of 6 or so guys and gal were each carrying at LEAST 50-100 lbs per person. CRAZY. Obviously, they'd never heard of backpacking. They were beasts, on our way back up we ended up reaching the top at the same time as them. We had a bit of a bonding experience. They were from Arizona. We always meet people on camping trips.



We have to go all the way back up theeere!



Back at our camp, we met our neighbor, Matthias, who is an artist hippy dude living on the road. He was an interesting fellow. I have his email and he gave us a painting!

Then as we were hitting up photo ops along the road when we were leaving, we met another hippy dude rambling on and on about chem trails. We had him take our picture. It's so magnificent that it looks fake!

Until next time, Grand Canyon (and there WILL be a next time)!

~M~