Grand Canyon South Rim

Today...
we...
found...
an archaeological find!
We were driving along to the Grand Canyon when out of the passenger side window, I spotted it. It was a very large spinal column. Thinking that I had found a replacement for Travis's, I let out a high-pitched "Wa-hoo!" And of course, we just had to pull over and look at it.
Upon close, "scientific" examination, we decided that this spine would not work for Travis because it belonged to an elk. Out of respect for the dead, we did not take any pictures, but we took our find as a good Friday the 13th omen - this was going to be an interesting day. To add to our first good omen, as we were driving off, we found another elk - this one even less-decayed than the first!

I realize this is weird. I will stop talking about the dead elk now.

Elk.

Ok, so while we have timed everything else on this trip fairly perfectly, today we did not time as well. We really wanted to see the sunset over the canyon, so we tried to wait as long as we could before leaving, but we still ended up at the canyon around mid-morning, so after we had seen every single overlook and hiked rim trail, it was only 5:00, and we decided just to cut our losses and head back to Williams. We did have a wonderful day at the canyon, though.

Some highlights:
- The weather was perfect. 80 degrees made it nice to just walk around and look at the canyon.
- The canyon itself was amazing. It looks like someone took a gigantic canvas and just painted the scene by hand. It's really neat how the north rim and south rim are both so different - it really makes it worth it to see both.
- There was a raven sitting in the top of a tree, and it kept squawking at anyone who parked under it - he was funny to watch.
- While we were eating lunch, we saw some people walk by with a cute little grey and white miniature schnauzer. It made me miss Jax so much!
- We saw the historic El Tovar hotel and the Grand Canyon railway
- Elk - live ones!

It was a lovely day at the canyon, and now we are back in Williams. We ate at a little Mexican place called Pancho Magillicuddy's. It was ok...

This is all you will hear from us for a couple of days. Tomorrow we hike and camp at Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. After that, we will head to Las Vegas to gamble away the rest of our money. Well...hopefully we will make it that far. You see, we never did find a tent, so right now we have some tarp, rope, and our sleeping bags. If you do not hear from us after 3 days, please send someone down to retrieve our half-eaten carcasses from the bottom of the canyon. Thank you.

In all seriousness, though, I was informed today that there are a lot of people getting enjoyment out of this blog. Thanks for reading - I'm glad we're not boring you!