[Day 111-114] Grand Canyon & Bryce

July 19th, we drove out of Joshua Tree and headed towards Grand Canyon. This is a pretty long drive which would take us most of the day.

Naturally, we wanted to cut down on travel time as much as possible, so I was driving a little over the speed limit. Until I overtook a car and went quite a bit over it. That car was a police car… Oops :). My first hand delivered speeding ticket. No clue how much I’ll have to pay, but judging from what the internet has to say about it, it’ll be a downer.

We managed to complete the remainder of the drive without any run-ins with local law enforcement, so that was nice. The bad thing was that the campsite in Grand Canyon was full and there was a ranger at the entrance, so we couldn’t drive in and ask people to share a site. Luckily, there were still some (expensive) spots available in a nearby village.

Big buck grazing by the side of the road at Grand Canyon.

The next morning, day 112, we hiked part of the Rim Trail and then headed down partway into the canyon by ways of the Bright Angel trail. This was pretty nice, offering some sights different from the ones along the rim, which get rather repetitive after a while. The canyon is nice, Veronique really loved it, but I find it a bit of the same over and over.

Nice view to the North rim.

This squirrel was eating all the berries of this bush.

Excellent view somewhere east of the entrance.

In the late afternoon I prepared all my dinners for the JMT and put all packages in the correct bucket for shipping later. After, we headed back into the  park for some stargazing. We got some info from an astronomy professor and tons of people had very fancy telescopes set up for everyone to take a look. Really fun evening!

All 15kgs of JMT food packages (all 75 of them).

The next morning we buckled up for another long drive, all the way to Bryce Canyon. We took a short scenic drive through the park and saw a small herd of Pronghorn super up close.

Pronghorn right in our face! Second fastest land animal in the world.

Beautiful view over the hoodoos.

After a good nights sleep in one of the many available campsites, we did a very pretty 3 mile hike in between the hoodoos. The best part was without a doubt when we sat down for a quick snack and a little boy came up to us: “Excuse me, there’s a snake right under you.” A 15cm piece of wood separated Veronique from a huge rattlesnake! Good thing they are almost impossible to get a bite out of, especially if they are adult.

Down between the hoodoos.

Cicada? Dunno, but it's pretty!

Super pretty awesome rattlesnake right underneath our asses!

One last shot of the hoodoos.

Definitely the most animal fun I’ve had in the USA so far!