Desert View Tower & Grand Canyon hiking

 Our first afternoon, we decided to drive out to see the Desert View Tower-along the road out to the tower there were LOTS of viewpoints with parking lots where people could pull off, get out, look around and take pictures.  There is a gate to the park that is near this tower but it was closed when we were there.  If it had been open, we had planned to do this road on our way out of the park, leaving the Grand Canyon area.  Since that wasn't going to work, it seemed best to do it this day when we weren't under a time crunch.

I think it's interesting to take pictures of local license plates when we travel

The lobby in the hotel restaurant-they had a cool fireplace and I thought this table was neat looking.  It was beside the chairs in the above picture.

Below begins our 2nd day in Grand Canyon where we did 2 hikes.

Scott and Ryan stopped here (at Ooh Aah point) for a snack, waited for us to take pictures together and they hiked further down.

We laughed about how much our views on this trip reminded us of Road Runner and Coyote cartoons!  The boys called them "mee meeeep, pow" when they were little and asked us to watch them.

Greg, Ashley, and I rested and enjoyed the view here for a little while and then started back up.

When we were waiting for the boys, we saw mules coming up our same trail.  They had been down delivering supplies to the place in the bottom of the canyon where you can spend the night.

Our 2nd hike was Bright Angel trail

Ashley knew that a school friend of hers was going to be in the Grand Canyon.  When she told me that Phoebe was going there as well, I asked if she knew what day or anything about her plans.  Ashley said no and that another friend had told her Phoebe was going there too.  I jokingly said we'd have to look for her while we hiked.  So we all had a big laugh when Ashley DID see Phoebe on Bright Angel Trail.  They just said hi and had a laugh over seeing each other-her family was headed up and we were going down, so not a long visit.  Fun, though to see a friend from South Carolina so far from home.

It reminded me of running into some Sunday School class friends in the bathroom at Mammoth Caves over Spring Break a few years ago.

It was the day to wear pink for us girls