Hello Friends and Family!
Well, we have finally arrived at the Grand Canyon, we are sitting in the library of the Grand Canyon town doing some business. Some neat stats about our bike riding since last update: We have ridden from Prescott, AZ to Grand Canyon Village, a total distance of around 125 miles, over the course of 3 days. That is an average of ~41 miles a day. Over this stretch we climbed around 1600 feet, from 5400 in Prescott to 7000 at the Grand Canyon. Here is the map of the route we took: http://goo.gl/maps/FXQsW
Below are our journal entries from these days:
May 29th:
We left Prescott around 5:30 this day. Our host was nice enough to wake up 3 hours earlier than usual and make us breakfast. People can be so kind! We biked from Prescott to Chino Valley first, it was mainly downhill and a super fun ride! Here is a short video I took on one of our descents:
We rested a bit in Chino Valley and then headed to Paulden. We made it to Paulden in great time, around 9:00AM. This was our planned destination for the day, but we rested for a while and then decided to continue on towards Ash Fork. There was overcast for the first time since our arrival, so we thought we would use it, and we were also well rested from our break day in Prescott. We got about 12 miles along, just north of a town called Drake, and pitched our tent. The view from our tent is below.
May 30th:
On This day we woke up at 5:30 and continued biking towards Ash Fork. We arrived there around 8:15 and took a break. We refueled water and prepared ourselves for our 18 mile bout along Interstate 40. All the locals told us it was route full of semi trucks, but there would be a good shoulder.
I-40 sucked. It was loud, the asphalt was hot, there were tons of uphills, and tons of construction (meaning a smaller shoulder). When we made it to the top of a particularly challenging uphill around mile 9, I stopped and asked construction worker if there were any more big climbs. He said nothing like what we had just done. PHEW. The rest of the ride was rolling hills, up and down, but nothing too strenuous. During the very last descent into Williams, we saw the same constructions workers and they cheered us on. It felt amazing.
In Williams, we were hungry. We both agreed this day was our second hardest yet, after Yarnell of course. We located the nearest Mexican restaurant and chowed down. We each had a big entree plus an appetizer and 5 horchatas. It was a good time. Then we napped at a city park, and at around 6PM we biked about 5 miles north on 64 and found a place to make camp for the night.
May 31st:
We woke up at 4:00AM with the intent of making it all the way to the Grand Canyon. Well, 10 miles out, where our campground was located. We began biking and for the first time on this trip it was chilly in the morning. That soon passed though, and it went straight from cool to way-too-hot. Before it got too hot though, we arrived in Valle, a town about 35 miles south of the Canyon. We refueled there and Colombe got a coffee. In our itinerary we had originally planned to spend the night here, then continue to the canyon the next day, but we made the decision to go for it, and we did. Valle is located in desert, so we had to climb quite a bit to make it to our campground, about 1000 feet over the course of 25 miles. It wasn't terrible though because it became cool, pine forest which didn't sap our energy quite as fast.
We made it to Ten-X campground in Kaibab National Forest and passed out. We went into Tusayan that evening and ate dinner, bought our park permits for the week, and otherwise prepared for our trip to the Grand Canyon the next day!
June 1st:
We woke up around 6 and were headed out towards the canyon by 6:30. We had to make it to the backcountry office to apply for our permit by 8:00! Through some complications (burst tire and a mangled back rack..) we made it there a bit after 8. We found they can only give out permits for 2 days in advance, so we had first priority the next day. (we wanted a break day after all our biking anyway!)
We went to the bike shop in Grand Canyon Village to repair my (Stephen's) bike. We met a great mechanic there named Aaron. Together, we also fitted me with a new, heavy-duty back rack. Then we headed back to Ten-X to get some shut eye. It was a long day of running errands, and preparing for our rim-to-rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon!
June 2nd (Today):
Stephen woke up early to bike to the backcountry office again, and Colombe packed up our campsite and gear. We met afterwards at the bike shop (our new favourite place to hang out).
We are now preparing to begin our hike tomorrow. We will stay in Bright Angel Campground on Tuesday night, and Cottonwood Campground on Wednesday night, both of which are on the canyon floor. Thursday we will ascend to the North Rim of the Canyon (elevation 8000) and spend a night there before returning to the south rim.
We may be out of contact for a while, as cell service will be slim to none in the canyon, but we will update with more pictures and stories when we can!
We are at the south rim now, and our back country permit begins tomorrow!
Take care and until next time,
Aoife + Stephen (.84 horchatas per day!)
A few more photos from this section: