This was our last day to visit the Grand Canyon before returning to the historic Route 66 trip in Flagstaff, AZ.  Since we had a mostly cloudy and wet day yesterday, it was great to awake to sunshine!

The plan was to take the 1.5 mile roundtrip hike down to the OOH AAH overlook which was 760 feet lower that the canyon rim.  The Park Service bills this as a moderate hike.

We drove the 57 miles to the GCNP area near the visitor center where the shuttle buses operate.   We got the orange bus to get to the South Kaibab Trailhead and started down the canyon at 10:15 AM.  Going down was pretty easy–that gravity works both directions, but down is better than up!  There are quite a few switchbacks, especially near the top.

The mules use this trail to get to the canyon bottom and we noticed this right away by the presence of a very recognizable odor and little piles of fresh droppings on the trail.  This lasted about 1/3 the way down the trail and then was no more.  We were glad for this!  We were fortunate  (?) to actually see the mules returning from the bottom when we were about 1/2 way down.

The view from the OOH AAH point was very nice especially since the air was less hazy today following the storm that cleared the canyon air.  We took quite a few pictures on the way down and from the point. Here I am standing near the point pondering the trip back up the trail.

And here is a photo showing the switchbacks with people making the hike.  (They are pretty small on the trail).

We returned to the rim after a bit of heavy breathing around 12:10 nearly two hours for the hike.

Since the canyon was clearer today, we decided to rest up by having lunch near the bus area in the Grand Canyon Village and take a couple more stops on the red line in order to have better photography conditions than yesterday.  We rode the bus instead of walking–this should surprise no one given that we’d just hiked back up to the rim!  We revisited Pima Point and Hermits Rest and had better lighting.

This Grand Canyon excursion was a side trip to the main Route 66 adventure.  We returned to Route 66 by exiting the park at the south entrance and made our way to Flagstaff finding a cache along the way.

Once again, we had dinner from the supplies brought with us rather than finding a place to eat out.  We spent most of the evening planning the next few days of travel and caches to be found.  Gary downloaded a couple of his 8GB cards from the camera so there would be some to refill with more images.

The Murano has to go to the local dealer in Flagstaff for an oil change, but we have a noise in the driver’s side window that needs to be checked out.  Hoping this doesn’t take too long as we have a lot of miles to cover tomorrow!

Another great day on the road!  Drove 150 miles today.