Day 6 - Rim Trail to Hermits Rest

The canyon village from along the rim trail 

Today we got up around 5:30 AM and were hoping to get breakfast from the lodge around 6:00 AM, but they don’t start serving breakfast till 6:30 AM.  This seems a little silly considering the buses start running as early as 5:00 AM and they recommend you be out on the trails early so you can finish up your first hike around 10:00 AM to avoid the heat and sun of the day.  We waited for them to start serving breakfast, we both had breakfast burritos which weren’t very warm or very good, this put us heading to the trails at around 7:00 AM.  We walked the rim trail from the Bright Angel trailhead to Hopi Point, which is all paved.  We took the bus from there to Monument Creek vista and walked to Pima Point, then took the bus the rest of the way to Hermit’s Rest.  All told we walked about 5-miles. 

Hikers on the Bright Angel trail clearing the first tunnel, they have hike a mile in at this point. 

You can see the mule riders on the Bright Angel Trail not even 1/2 way down yet.

It is a lizard on the edge. 

We had lunch at Hermit’s Rest before taking the bus all the way back to our starting point at Bright Angel trail head, and walked the rest of the way to our hotel.  Once there we relaxed a bit before hopping on a different bus to go to the General Store in Grand Canyon Village to pick up soap to wash our lunch utensils and some Gatorade. 

This was us taking it easy today.  We have determined that they are right, you should be done hiking by 10:00 AM,  we stopped at 11:00 AM at Hermits Rest to eat lunch.  It just gets too bright out to comfortably walk/hike long distances.   While hiking both Jim and I are wearing sunscreen, hats, and sun shirts to block the UV rays. Our hiking packs do have water bladders in them and we basically drank all the water in them during our hike today.  

Tomorrow we are going to attempt to do some astrophotography and get some sunrise photos.  This means we will have to be up around 2:00 AM, so an early bedtime tonight.

That bit of blue in the photo is the river at the bottom of the canyon.