The Grand Canyon is big.

This was a surprise to me. Sure, it's "Grand" and all, but honestly-- how big could it be? Well, there's a reason there're no good pictures of the Grand Canyon. It just doesn't fit on film.

But you can't blame a girl for trying; here's a shot down Bright Angel Canyon:


After the awards ceremony Monday Craig and I drove 4 hours north to stay one night at the Grand Canyon. We left sunshine and 80 degree temps to go through some snow showers and cool breezes in the park. Crazy!

Anyway, we checked in our hotel, took the trail around the rim for about 2 hours, and picked up some dinner before crashing mightily into bed. Unfortunately, I'm the biggest altitude baby there is and at 7000 ft I was sucking wind and pulling out the inhaler what felt like every 5 minutes. It sucked a little.

Tuesday morning Craig and I got up at 4:30 to take a Sunrise Tour. We'd brought sweatshirts for the cold weather, but we weren't prepared for the chill before the sun could warm us up. We were chilly willy:


But despite the tour guide's bad jokes and the cold wind (omg could the wind just freakin stop already?), it was well worth it to finally see sunrise. Again, pictures don't do a bit of justice to the experience, but they're a nice little symbol of what we saw.


Finally, once the sun came up we could de-hood. Not that it made us any more photogenic:


Once the tour was over we got a hearty breakfast in the lodge, then headed down the Bright Angel trail. As soon as I saw the Canyon I wanted to hike all the way down, but there was no way Craig or my protesting quads would've let me. We settled for a trip 1300 ft down and 1.5 miles along the trail to the first trail stop, a prestigious... toilet. Yup, that's the first (and the second) landmark on the trail. As ridiculous of a stopping point as it was, it was a serious climb out. Here we are about 20 minutes from climbing our way back out:


Bet you didn't expect to be bombarded with Craig + Mishele = loooove pictures, did you? If you're nauseous I'm sorry... but you'll get over it. Anyway, we did the three mile trail in just over an hour and a half... not too bad post-ironman, especially with all the stops we had to make for the mule tours on our trip back up (not that we were complaining-- the rest was welcomed!)

After the hike we showered and high-tailed it back to Phoenix to catch our (late) flight back to Houston. All in all a good trip, no?