RV DAY 8: SUNRISE AT THE GRAND CANYON

Top of the morning campers! After our wonderful time at Zion, we continued our journey to the Grand Canyon. We decided against visiting both the North Rim and the South Rim, because even though the two rims stand only 10 miles apart, it takes 215 miles to get there by road around the canyon. Since they haven’t built a skywalk and we are not birds who can swiftly fly from one rim to the other, we chose the less touristy North Rim. Plus it was my birthday, so I did not have to lift a finger for an entire day. My slave did all the work (yes I called him “slave” all day too), which meant the usual 70/30 split of responsibility was now 99/1. I did help out on a couple occasions when I felt like it – like getting a napkin.

We celebrated my birthday relaxing at the Grand Canyon Lodge, as my bicycle injuries prevented any difficult hikes. The lodge had a great viewing room with three huge windows and rows of leather sofas. Unfortunately, the design was slightly flawed (no offense to the architects). When you sit down on the sofa, you sink so low that you only see the sky, not the grand canyon as it is blocked by the window frames. Either the windows should have been floor to ceiling or the room should have been built with stadium seating to allow for better viewing.

After watching sunset with wine on the porch and dining at the lodge where the food was slightly overcooked, we attended a star gazing party hosted by the volunteers of the Phoenix Saguaro Astronomy Club. We were very lucky to catch the last night of this week-long star gazing event. When we peered through one of the telescopes, Saturn at 250 billion miles away looked like a sticker from the Air and Space Museum. Since both the earth and Saturn were rotating at the same time, it appeared as though Saturn was moving away from one end of the telescope to the other.

When we retired for the evening, we set our alarms for 4:30 am to catch the sunrise at 5:11. The sky was pitch black when the alarm went off. Still half asleep, we stumbled our way to the vista point, but the sky still didn’t look anywhere close to sunrise and we were the only two fools out there. When I turned off airplane mode on the iPhone to check email, the time suddenly changed from 4:50 am to 3:50 am. DOH! The phone was on airplane mode when we switched time zones! We could have slept for an extra hour. We both laughed at Justin's idiotic mistake and sat there shivering for another hour before everyone else started appearing with their cameras as the sun slowly rose. But watching the beautiful pink sunrise on the Grand Canyon was well worth it!

Next stop: Bryce Canyon. Over and out.