My parents told me in September they had reservations for 3 nights of camping on the South Rim of the grand canyon and would I like to come join them in October. By the way, they were leaving that day (in September). I happened to tell two friends as we went on a bike ride for coffee and they jumped right in. So, the 3 of us booked tickets to crash my parents' vacation.
My parents picked us up in Vegas where they were camped near Valley of Fire, NV
These are the scenes we woke up to:
We then quickly drove over to the Red Rock viewpoint while waiting for the 80% solar eclipse to happen at 10am. There is a loop drive you can take but it requires reservations.
We then packed up and drove a bit east so we could Boondock (camp in the wilderness-no site, no service) just outside Valley of Fire, which my parents assured us was much better than Red Rock
We ran a loop through the desert and visited Mouse Trap-a natural water cistern and site of many petroglyphs.
After Valley of Fire, we slept and then the next morning headed to the North Rim of Grand Canyon where my parents got a camp spot cancelation on the last day the north rim is open for the year-Oct 15. It's about a 4 hour drive.
After checking in at the ranger station to figure out what water was on and turned off and checking temperatures and weather for the following day, we went to bed, planning to run/hike down the North Kabob trail in the morning.
We took a little side trip once we got near the bottom to Ribbon Falls. Ribbon Falls is not visible from the main trail and the bridge has been out for a few years. This means you have to cross a small creek that the falls feeds.
At the bottom of the canyon we saw the Colorado River.
After refilling water at Phantom Ranch in the bottom we headed back up the Bright Angel trail to the Mather campground on the South Rim my parents were meanwhile driving 5 hours to:
The next day my parents got a cancelation at Phantom Ranch, so they headed down the South Kabob trail to spend the night in the canyon.
The next day they'd head up Bright Angel Trail:
We went out to dinner and drove around the south rim of the canyon enjoying the views:
The canyon looked huge, but this sign made us realize we aren't even seeing a tiny portion of the canyon:
There were Elk all over the campground. They esp liked the water fill station:
One friend and I decided the next day to head down South Kabob and see if we could catch my parents on their way back up Bright Angel.
My parents ended up beating us back up to the top by an hour!
After we all got back up out of the canyon we had another sleep and headed back to Vegas (about 4 hour drive) where we checked out Glitter Gulch-Fremont street, the original strip. We gambled a little bit then met a friend of mine for dinner and flew back home.
