Still a good crack!

It's official! The Grand Canyon is 'as old as the hills, and twice as dusty!' We had a fabulous time hiking down and up The Grand Canyon. I'll probably loose a few toe nails, but what an accomplishment! We took three days to do the round trip. We were VERY lucky to get the permit (thanks to a little Nevada time zone misunderstanding, we got in line an hour before we had planned!). We went down the 6 mile South Kaibab trail in about 6 hours. My poor toes kept slamming the front of my boots, and I don't think they'll ever forgive me! We made it to the bottom, though, and it was well worth the pain. The river was beautiful and we got to camp along the Bright Angel riverlet. At the bottom it was green and so warm. There was a 20 - 25 degree difference from the top to the bottom of the canyon. When it was 18 or 20 degrees F at the top at night, we enjoyed a very warm 40-45 degrees. The next morning we took our time and left camp around noon. It was 4.6 miles to the next campsite, and it only went up about 1320 ft. It was the most beautiful part of the hike. We hiked through green little canyons and saw waterfalls and deer and we watched the sun set. We were pretty tired when we wandered into camp five hours later. It wasn't that difficult of a hike, but we took it really slow and enjoyed the scenery. The next morning we got an earlier start along the last 4.6 miles to the top, almost 3000 ft above us. It was SO much easier going up than it was going down! We saw bighorn sheep along the way! We had so much fun, and the week was only starting! More soon about the further adventures of the Cardons!