Grand Canyon

For much of the trip in Arizona we followed the famous Route 66. It's a bit of a sad story, or certainly a tale of 'progress', in the way it was superceded by interstates and how the economies of the communities it originally passed through were decimated.

We stayed overnight in Williams, I described it as a two-horse town when we drove in and Liam later confirmed this by spotting two life-size models of horses on the high street.

The next morning we drove out to the Grand Canyon, just over an hour north of Williams. Words cannot accurately describe the scenery here, so here are some photographs instead. We parked up at the South Rim visitor centre and took advantage of the free shuttle bus that runs along the rim, stopping at the lookouts. We walked some of the short trails between a few of the stops because it gave us the chance to look a bit closer at the wildlife (squirrels and some really big ravens) and spend all the time we wanted at the rim

It looks pretty inhospitable and it is. Temperatures down at the river top out at the low 100's in August. At the start of each of the trails, there are plenty of signs about preparing for hikes. One was about Margaret L. Bradley, a 24 year old medical student who died of dehydration during a run in 2004. She was a keen athlete, who'd completed the Boston marathon in under 3 hours. She was running with a friend (who survived) and they'd made a series of what turned out to be fatal mistakes. They thought the hike was 15 miles (at 27 miles, it was almost double that), they didn't take a proper trail map or enough water or food. Her friend became severely dehydrated and exhausted and their last mistake was for Margaret to leave him to find help and water. She never returned. And when he was rescued, he didn't raise the alarm that she was missing.