Photos: Grand Canyon Trip 2007

On Sunday, my hip was still feeling sore (what am I, 85 years old?), so we didn’t go for any long/strenuous trails and kept to the rim trails. We drove for awhile to get to the Cape Final trailhead, and on the way, we stopped at some scenic viewpoints and saw some mule deer.

Unfortunately, we also saw some huge tour buses, so we hightailed it away from there as fast as we could. Faster than the deer, actually, who were probably hanging around for a snack.

After parking at the Cape Final trailhead, we headed out into the thick of the Kaibab Forest. At first I thought that maybe it was a bad choice of a trail, because it was basically a walk through the forest without a view of the canyon. But finally we cleared a ridge and the canyon spread out below us. Quite a nice spot to stop and eat lunch, actually.

After we ate lunch, we continued on the trail for a bit, checking out all the ledges and cliffs that we came across.

After that, we headed back to the car to check out some other trails. It’s interesting to note, though, that the park rangers used controlled burns in the Kaibab Forest to clear out vegetation and facilitate the life cycle of the Ponderosa Pine trees. You could tell just by driving by the forest or taking a short hike.

However, the rangers do not maintain the trail that we were on – it’s strictly maintained by volunteers, leading to this type of scenario: