For spring break, Carson, Lieu, my roommate Jessica, and I went on a hiking extravaganza. We visited Havasupai Falls, the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Bryce National Park, and Zion National Park all in one week. It was an intense seven days, but well worth the amazing sights we saw.
The adventure began on Friday morning when we left from Newport Beach and began our seven hour drive to Havasupai Falls trail head. We ate dinner, and set up camp at the rim of the canyon which we were to hike down in the morning. We woke up early the next morning and walked the 10 mile 2,500 foot decent to the falls. Before we got to the falls, we had to stop at the village (eight miles in) to pay for our campsite and to get some extra food because we decided to stay an extra night. I guess that would have been something we should have decided before we left our car, but luckily they had a “grocery store”. I say “grocery store” because it was about the size of my bedroom and it was out of stock of most things. It was however a pretty impressive village considering there are no roads that lead into the canyon and there are many houses, air-conditioning units, washer and dryers, and even a trailer RV. They get all of their supplies and materials there by only mule’s and helicopters; it must have been a lot of trips! We finally left the town and two miles later, we were there; an oasis in the middle of the desert. We set up camp again and went for a swim in Havasu Falls.
It was awesome; we had the whole falls to ourselves! The next day Carson, Lieu and I went down to Mooney falls. It was pretty scary getting down to the falls because we had to climb down a cliff that had chains and make-shift ladders to help you guide your way down the slippery wall. Once we got there it was definitely worth the climb. We again had the falls to ourselves; it was totally unbelievable, we had this incredible falls and only each other to share it with. I thought that was something that only happened in the movies. Mooney Falls was really impressive; there was also a rope swing there which really made the experience. After we had our share of the rope swing, we hiked down the river a little ways and we also found a really cool little fall which was like a natural shower; we all stood under it and took some photos, it was really cool. We climbed back up the wall we scaled down and went back to our campsite to hang out for one more night. The next morning we packed up and proceeded with the uphill 10 mile hike and three hour drive to the Grand Canyon.
We got to the Grand Canyon in the evening and took a nice and relaxing night; we made dinner, had some hot chocolate and went to bed. The next morning Carson, Lieu and I woke up at a quarter to four in the morning to watch the amazing sunrise. It was pretty awesome but we had to wait for the bus for like 15 minutes so we didn’t catch the sun actually coming up over the horizon, but we made in time to watch the beautiful pink and blue colors of the morning. During the day we finally showered off the layers of grime from our time at Havasu and did some laundry so my car would not smell like a dirty sock. Later in the day, we went on a little hike along the rim of the Canyon and watched the sunset at Mohave point overlooking the canyon and the Colorado River. We left the next morning for Bryce National Park and along the way we stopped at Antelope Canyon.
At first we were thinking that we were getting ripped off because the entrance to Antelope canyon is right across form this big power plant. Despite our concerns, we paid our money and loaded up into the back of this truck which drove a few miles through the desert sand to the canyon. It was pretty intense ride considering there were no seat belts and the back of bed of the truck we were sitting in was wide open for anyone to fall out. We got to the canyon and began our tour which was really a way for them to make people feel like they were getting their moneys worth. They just walked us through the canyon and would tell us when they thought a wall looked like Gorge Washington, or Abe Lincoln. It would have been much better if we didn’t have to go on a tour, but that was the only way we could see the canyon. It was really an amazing place. The pictures don’t even do it justice, so I would definitely recommend this stop if you are ever going through Page, AZ.
We got to Bryce in the evening, found a campsite, ate dinner and went to bed. The next morning, I decided that it would be a great idea to take a shower with the sun shower that Carson has. The problem about it was that the sun really didn’t have any time to warm up the water, and considering that there were spots of snow on the ground, it was definitely is in the running for the coldest shower I have ever taken. I was actually getting brain freezes when I would keep my head under the water for too long. I am not too sure how that happened, but it was quite uncomfortable. Needless to say, it was a really quick and short shower. Since we had some minor injuries and everyone was tired, we decided to take a driving tour of Bryce Canyon. There is a road that takes you to all of the great viewpoints and gives you nice overlooks of the whole park so it worked out that we got to see a lot of Bryce even though we didn’t go hiking. My favorite part of Bryce was definitely Inspiration Point. It had such cool views of all the hoodoos, which are those weird rock formations that you see in the Bryce pictures in the photos section of this website. After we drove around Bryce for a few hours, we continued on our journey and went to Zion National Park, or should I say the Disneyland of National Parks, which was only about an hour away. If you have ever been to Zion, you know exactly what I mean when I call it Disneyland. There are so many people there, many of which are children, because the park is so user friendly. They have short trails, some of which are paved, and a great tram service which enables people of all abilities to see the beauty of this area.
Zion is really impressive. We drove for about a half an hour through the park to get to the visitors center and that half hour drive was unbelievable. The rock formations were unlike anything I had ever seen. It looked like a huge boulder was made from a stack of flat rocks piled on top of each other, and there were hundreds of these boulders, almost like a rock mountain range. After we got to the visitors center, we took the tram up to an easy hike at Emerald Pools. They were not that impressive after just being at Havasu falls, but it was still pretty cool. I guess they are much prettier when there is more water not during a drought. The campsites were full in Zion, so the backcountry ranger told us to go stay outside the park at mile marker 24. It was the start of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land which is land that no one owns; this meant that we would camp free! At first we were thinking we would be staying in a shady place off the side of the highway all by ourselves, the kind of place one would stay if they were a main character of a scary movie, but when we got to mile marker 24, we saw that it was quite the opposite. It was an RV haven; there was a ton of people doing the same thing we were, many of which had 300,000 dollar RV’s. We found a nice spot by the Virgin River, made some dinner, and went to bed. The next day, Carson, Lieu, and I decided that we wanted to get more of a feel of Zion so we went on some more short hikes while Jessica took some much needed rest at the Lodge. Our first stop was the weeping rock. It was nice, but there were so many people at this rock because it was the shortest hike (.5 miles round trip) and it was a fully paved trail. We wanted a more secluded hike where we could enjoy the views with out all the people so we went to the river walk which ended at the start of a narrows hike up the Virgin River. I guess because of our injuries, we were doomed to hang out at Disneyland for the remainder of the day because there were still a lot of people on this walk. We got to see a glimpse of what hiking the narrows would be like; I really would love to go back and hike the narrows. It looks so much fun, and most of the time you are hiking in the water; how awesome is that? At the end of the day, it seemed like everyone wanted to get back to a hot shower and real food, so we left after our hikes for home. Along the way we stopped at a state park called the Valley of Fire. We didn’t get out except to see this rock formation that looked like an elephant, but it was still really pretty to drive through and see all these unique red rock formations.
We got back to my grandmas, and immediately Carson, Lieu and I went into the hot-tub while Jessica took a hot shower. The next day I returned all the equipment to my aunt that she let us borrow; we repacked the car and headed back to my house. It was an unbelievable spring break, and I was able to do and see a lot of amazing things.
Entries (RSS)