Day 31 - Grand Canyon

Today, we're at the grand canyon, all day. We're up at 8am and grab breakfast at the hotel. Charlie is excited.

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10:00am

We're hiking Bright Angel trail down into the canyon.

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Because we're pretty novice hikers, we only went down to the Mile-and-a-half Resthouse, appropriately named, it's a mile and a half down the trail. It's a 1065 foot elevation change which is plenty for us. Especially since at the start of the hike, Charlie is nervously clinging to the wall, Laura is expressing doubts and Elodie is crying her head off. Katie is plunging ahead fearlessly and I'm plodding along with Elodie on my back.

[video of Laura and Charlie catching up to me]

[video of Katie going through one of the tunnels]

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We did settle into a rhythm and found a stride that worked for us. We even saw some cool wildlife, like an enormous black and yellow butterfly with bright blue wing tips on the way down.

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I later learned that the butterfly was a Western Tiger Swallowtail, not rare, but still cool to see up close.

On the way back up, Charlie kicked it into gear. This is the last I saw of him

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Laura, Katie and I followed a more sedate pace

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[video of Laura and Katie climbing back up]

By 1:30pm, we're back on the rim.

2:15pm

We're strolling around the rim, looking at shops.

I took this picture of Charlie and then asked him to take a picture of Elodie and me.

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As you can see, she didn't like being that close to the edge.

Katie had her eye on a Junior Ranger outfit

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which she quickly changed into and wore with pride.

4:30pm

We snagged an early reservation to dinner at the El Tovar. We were a little ragged looking for the nice dining room and Elodie slept through dinner in her stroller, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

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After dinner, Elodie came back to life. She said the first 4-word sentence I'd ever heard her use,
"Look at me, Momma." and then did this cute little "no-hands" trick on a bench.

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She then proceeded to don Laura's fanny pack and want to push the stroller.
[video 1 of Elodie pushing stroller]
[video 2 of Elodie pushing stroller]
I think we're lucky the stroller didn't wind up at the bottom of the canyon. :-)

All, in all, we had a pretty great day at the canyon

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We went back to the hotel, did laundry and got ready for a big driving day to Disneyland.