Bicycling the Rim of the Grand Canyon

Today we bicycled along the rim of the Grand Canyon.  Approximately 13 miles of the South Rim are easily accessible by tourists.  You can hop on and off a park shuttle at the many viewpoints, or you can walk as far along the rim trail as you wish.  Or you can bicycle.  We wanted to bicycle so that we could take our time and stop wherever we liked without being so jammed up with other tourists.

Here's Kathy getting her Grand Canyon High - in cycle fashion:

David got his cycle going too:

There were so many splendid views, and all the colors and textures were indescribable.  This is our third visit to the Grand Canyon and we still can't get enough.

The photo below shows the route we're going to follow tomorrow when we backpack down the Bright Angel Trail.  You can see Indian Garden campground in the middle, where the drainage is decorated with green - cottonwood trees and grass in an otherwise arid environment.  To get an idea of the scale of things, note the small figures on an outcropping in the upper center-left of the photo:

At one particularly accessible point, we asked someone to take our picture together.  The morning mist had lifted and the day was glorious:

It's very hard to decide which view of the canyon is our favorite.  Here's another classic view highlighting some of the structures and colors:

This view looks east along the South Rim:

David got brave and walked out onto an outcropping and Kathy snapped this photo, which gives you some impression of how much depth there is in the views:

Here is yet another photo showing some spectacular formations.  The various rock strata visible in this photo reach back 1 billion years, although the canyon itself took "only" 5 or 6 million years old.

Yet another view, with glmpses of the deepest, dark Vishnu Basement stratum containing rocks nearly 2 billion years old:

This was our best view of the Colorado River today.  The Granite Rapids are clearly visible.  These rapids produce 15-foot waves and are rated "8" on Grand Canyon's scale from 1-10 (ten being the most severe in the park).  Today, the river's water was a deep glacial blue-green.  Remember as you look at this that the river is perhaps 9 miles away.

The western end of the sites accessible to tourists is named "Hermit's Rest," and is the trailhead for the Hermit Trail, which we hiked yesterday.  At Hermit's Rest, there is a gift shop and food service, as well as trailhead parking and picnic facilities.  The building itself was constructed in 1914 and designed by Mary Colter, an architect who designed several of the most famous structures at the Grand Canyon.

We stopped here for lunch.  Here's a selfies with the Grand Canyon behind us:

After a bite to eat and a brief rest, we pedaled straight back to Bright Angel Lodge (lots of ups and downs), where we treated ourselves to a beer and then headed home.  Before our bike ride, we had stopped at the Backcountry Office to see if we could score a backcountry camping permit for Indian Garden Campground for tomorrow night - and we did!  So we needed to get back here to the RV to start packing the backpacks for an overnight down into the canyon.

More on that adventure on Monday or Tuesday!