Keepin' it Gangsta in the Grand Canyon

We'll be staying two nights at that Grand Canyon. Turns out its kind of hard to get a room up here...and if you do get a room its going to cost a couple bones.

Uncle Floyd did some research on the tours that are available. There are a bunch of crazy ones. Like the helicopter tour where you fly over the canyon and land at the base of the canyon and you can then go white water rafting on the colorado river if you like for the cost of an arm, leg, and small new born child. Maybe some other day i'll hit that up.

Another tour was the bus tour for like 80 bones for one day. Sounds pretty lame. We decided to go for the week pass for motorcycles for 20 bones. When we went to the park it turned out to only be 12 bones, nice surprise.

We parked our bikes and hit the trail. Let me just say that there is not a single picture/painting that can do this place justice. They don't call it the "Grand Canyon" for nothing...this thing is HUGE! At first it looks fake for some reason...probably because you can't believe its real.
Wasn't long until we spotted some wild life. We saw some mule deer, elk, and squirrels within the first 30 minutes of entering the park. These animals aren't really scared of people.
One of the attractions at the park is taking a mule down to the bottom of the canyon and staying in a cabin over night and then coming back the next day. Not sure how much that is but you have to make a reservation a year in advance!

Below is Norm. Not sure what his real name is but he looks like a norm and he let me pet him.

After checking out some of the rim of the canyon we decided to do some real hiking and go into the canyon. We hiked down for about an hour to Cedar Ridge. Took some pictures and ate some trail mix. Now the tough part is coming back up. Some people said that it takes twice as long to come back than it does to go down...yeah right. i was itching for a good work out so i left uncle floyd and dad in the dust. i started at 2:50pm and arrived back at the top at 3:27pm. 37 minutes! Went up faster than i went down. My dad and uncle didn't meet me at the top until 36 minutes later. Its nice to know that i'm just out of shape rather than "60 yr old man out of shape".

Later we looked at the map and we weren't even close to reaching the base of the canyon...someday though.

Going back to the bikes we ran into this massive Elk.

When we got back to the room some how i got elected to find a place to eat. i looked at some reviews and turned out the only places recommended were back at the Park. We decided to go to the El Tovar Hotel. When we got to the hotel they were supposedly booked so we then went to the "second" best place to eat in the Grand Canyon Village, the Arizona Room.

It turned out to be a good call as we had a nice view of the sun setting on the canyon. For appetizer we got some jalpeno poppers. For the main course we all got the wild alaskan salmon. Not as big as the salmon served at the basque restuarant in Elko but still very good.

i wasn't going to get dessert...but then i heard that they not only have New York cheese cake with prickly pear sauce...but they're night's special was a snicker cheese cake. Turned out i should have gone with the NY cheese cake as the snickers was just too ridiculous. i'm not a big dark chocolate fan so the snicker cheese cake just wasn't for me.

i pretty much have my own room in the suite. i have a tv, couch, roll-away bed, and an a/c unit!

Not sure where we'll be going tomorrow but after all that hiking i can't wait to get back onto the bike!