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We have officially arrived in Vegas as of last night. Yesterday was our Grand Canyon hike that went pretty well. Got a late start, had a squirrel jump in the Miata, and wore ourselves out attempting to get out of the hole in the ground that is the Grandy Canyon. As we arrived at the canyon grounds at the head of the Bright Angel Trailhead we disembarked and started to get ready for what was going to be a great decent and climb. I had deliberately left the driver’s door open so that I could transfer anytyhing we didn’t need to the trunk of the car once we were packed. As we were assembling our backpack to take into the canyon with us, Squirrel decides there may be some squirrel bait in my car. He hopped up on the door sill like he owned the thing, looked around the floorboards for something, don’t know what, then looked at me like it was my fault I had not dropped any granola goodness in my car. He left rather quickly after a small scolding. We then headed down the Bright Angel Trail. Now, if no one has told you, or you can’t imagine, invision climbing a mountain backwards. You get the rewarding downhill part first, then you have to climb out afterwards. The only comparison I could come up with is it’s like a credit card for outdoors people. You leave the trailhead, decend into the canyon, get pictures and some breathtaking views, then all of a sudden you’re looking straight up, in our case almost a quarter mile, thinking crap, I’ve got to get back out of here. Well, after our decent we talked with a few people hiking the Grand Canyon from rim to rim who were completely exhausted and did not reccomend the activity at all, I’m sure they’d gotten memories to last a lifetime, but at the moment they were resting every switchback and just hoping to get to the top alive. At this point, we figured what goes down might come back up and turned around on our way back up the canyon wall, this is where things got a little tougher. I was thinking back to coming down the sometime gravel strewn path while Misty and I were talking about how it would be some much easier ascending the trail as you would be more sure footed and your knees would not have hurt at all. I wish I would have never said that….. Climbing out is not the end of the world, but it was strenuous and I could only imagine compounding this with 100+ degree days in the summer. We were fortunate it was only in the 90’s as there was overcast with brief sprinkles from time to time. I definitely think all the warnings are probably warranted as you could definitely go down much further than you are capaple of ascending in a timely fashion. Well, after all our huffing and puffing, we did manage to make it back to the top and headed back to Williams to pick up our luggage. After a brief chango of packing arrangement we headed out to Hoover Dam / LV. We made it to Hoover Dam without too much excitement and took a peak over the dam as well as a few pics. We then headed in to Las Vegas where we proceeded to drive up and down the strip which took entirely too long. I felt like there were hundreds of people who were driving with much more purpose and agression than I was, but who still had no place to go? Well after the frustrating drive down and back Las Vegas Blvd we checked in to our hotel and set out in search of a quick bite to eat which had us walking about a half mile for our dinner (I could only image I would be much skinnier if I had to do this every time before dinner) which consisted of two hamburgers at the hotel / maze next door. Well, we are now off to run around Las Vegas, Bye!