After a tough few months to study for the board exam, I finally had a chance to go on vacation. I think just not having to study palliative care medicine in itself was fantastic. We caught a plane to Pheonix and then a connecting flight to Flagstaff. I have to admit, the town is really cute. The downtown area is a collection of brick buildings and the bars and restaurants have a very cosmopolitan feel despite the small size.
I would recommend staying at the Monte Vista hotel - the Ramada we picked out really sucked. The Monte Vista is down town and is perhaps one of the oldest hotels in town. The bar reminds me of something from old west stories.
We also managed to hit some of the local restaurants including the Criollo which had some excellent Latin based food. The artwork on the walls was particularly fascinating:
We headed across the street to the wine loft - where a lot of the locals were sipping wine and playing board games - very cool hangout. We headed over to the Beaver Street Brewery which was really dead and I'm not sure why trip advisors rates it so high - it was borderline dive bar. However, the surrounding area did have a bunch of music venues which seemed to be in high gear.
We awoke the next morning and headed out with our travel company - Four Seasons Hikes. To be honest with you. I felt that we could have probably gotten a cheaper deal than this company. Again, not sure why trip advisor rates it so high. Its not a bad company and the people were very professional, but next time I'll go for something a bit cheaper - that said they do offer a bunch of good hiking services for a bunch of different locations.
We began on the north trail after traveling via van to the north rim for about 4 hours. The hike began at about 10 and I'll say now - Mid to late October is the perfect time to go! Not too hot and not too cold. We started along the North Kaibab trail and made our way to Cotton Wood camp grounds. Poor Maria was carrying about half her body weight in equipment - which we had to rectify the next day. However we all made the 7 mile trek. The campground was beautiful and if the Moon wasn't so bright we could have caught a great deal of the stars.
The path itself reminded me of hikes that I've taken before in the south west. It wasn't, however, until we made it past Cotton Wood that the true magnitude of the canyon really took fold. As we got close to Phantom Ranch - which is right next to the Colorado River, we could get a better view of the South rim and the sense of sheer size began to really set in.
For those of you who are interested, the Phantom Ranch actually has a bar. Which I taught was a bit strange in that every guide book and sign post we pasted has something about preserving yourself with water and avoiding dehydration. Either way the wine was pretty good =) .
By this time, my legs were killing me and I had managed to twist my ankle on a rock. We were passed by a bunch of people who were attempting to run the canyon from one end to the other - can you say wacko? I couldn't imaging being a runner and breaking an ankle in the middle of nowhere. That said there were at least three people that we saw being helicoptered out of the area.
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