To make our second visit to the Grand Canyon happen, Tater man went on his own little vacation to Cinder Hills Kennels. We dropped him off and grapped lunch in Flagstaff. Tried out a place, Sosoba — great cauliflower dish, bao buns and boys loved the dumplings. Shepherd says he wants to go back… badly! Quick treat visit to Mozelle’s bakery afterwards. There’s an open set of outdoor tables around the area and many local spots to grab a bite + eat outside.

We drove from lunch back to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and checked into El Tovar — oldest hotel in the area and felt like a piece of history. When we’d booked this several months back, I hadn’t been able to find availability on the National Parks site. I’d called asking if they had a wait list and found they had one room available (at the time I assumed someone had just cancelled a reservation). Upon check-in realized that I’d booked us into one of the rooms they don’t post for web booking — they have a series of rooms that highlight the history of key people to the area. So we checked into the Zane Grey suite – ha! J if you’re reading this he was famous as a Western author and a dentist 🙂

The first night, we settled in and walked the opposite direction along the rim from where we’d gone the previous weekend. The sunset over the canyon was beautiful!

El Tovar has one of the only solid dining areas, but we learned it’s very popular with lots of visitors — there was an insane line to put in your name for a table, starting at 4:30pm, but after letting this die down, we sat down for dinner around 7pm and had such a nice dinner with the boys. Shepherd and Rawls tried french onion soup (just a taste), Rawls helped me eat some of the crab and avocado appetizer, but mostly they were very happy with the plain pasta + parmesan.

On Saturday, we woke up early to start down the Bright Angel Trail — the main trail from the South Rim that can take you all the way to the Canyon floor. The trail itself is well managed and wide enough to handle hikers and mules taking people down into the canyon. We didn’t cross paths with any of these mules/groups, but we saw plenty remnants of their passing ahead. Walking down Bright Angel is a bit unnerving because the way down is easy, but you know you’ll be coming back up on the way back. Rawls had two slides (lots of trail dust) and I couldn’t wait for the third, so we turnd around ~700 vertical feet into the canyon. William and Shepherd continued onto the first rest stop and saw a funny Mountain Goat. The entire trail is 9.3 miles and 4400 vertical feet — they covered roughly a quarter of this. Note the photo below that Rawls spent a lot of time editing.

Rawls and I returned around 11 and William/Shepherd around noon. We grabbed lunch at Mastwick lodge and decided to push our luck and see if the boys had some energy left (answer: not much). Took the bikes off the back of the car which was parked right next to the GNC bike trails. Rawls is still getting comfortable biking so he and William practiced in an area while Shepherd and I went on a bike ride.. where I spent most the time coaxing him to continue. He perked up seeing about a dozen deer and then continued to pronounce their presence to every passerby for a few miles

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After the idyllic dinner the previous night (as close as it could have been), we decided we should, of course, try it again (there aren’t many options as it is). Welp, not quite the same experience. Shepherd’s legs were cramping (we think, although they magically stopped when he returned to the room) and Rawls was crying — the only thing we could make out was that we wouldn’t let him play with his Parrot robot at home (which he hasn’t touched in months). Cut dinner short and got rest everyone needed that night!