Bucket List: the North Rim with Bernie and Elinor

One of Dave's and my bucket list items has been to spend a night in a cabin on the edge of the Grand Canyon.  Over the July 6, 2018 weekend we did that.  It was even more fun than expected because we were joined by Bernie and Elinor Engelhard, friends from the 1970s, when Dave was in the Air Force in Tucson.  We like the Engelhards better and better as the years go by.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is spectacular, and not as hot or mobbed with people as the South Rim.  It is several thousand feet higher than the South Rim and is much harder to get to.

 The cabin was spartan, for $235 per night, but we could see the canyon through the trees.

One highlight of the weekend was an early morning hike with Elinor for several hundred feet below the rim.  We took the trail that leads down and down to the Colorado River.

 We watched, fascinated, as groups of tourists rode down the trail, past us, on mules. 

 As the mules and tourists paused for instructions before heading down the trail, we heard the wrangler admonish her charges.  "Don't let the mules stop to poop.  They can do it as they walk.  Don't let the mules stop to nibble at branches.  Look how fat they are.  And if you get scared, close your eyes."  We watched the mules step within a few inches of a thousand foot drop-off, and we were glad we depended on our own hooves, rather than theirs.

 Elinor made a point of stopping in "every spot of good shade" as we traipsed back uphill.  I stopped every hundred steps to catch my breath.  It took us a long time to get back up to the rim!

This couple had hiked from the South Rim to their camp along the Colorado River.  They then hiked to the North Rim and would soon turn around to hike back down, break camp tomorrow, and return to the South Rim.  Elinor and I couldn't comprehend doing that.

In the afternoon, we joined Bernie for a ranger lecture.  The ranger told about a couple who, in 1928, had tried to brave the Grand Canyon on rafts without life jackets, as they set out to make a speed record through the canyon.  They disappeared, with their boat found floating in an eddy at the bottom of the canyon.  As the ranger began his presentation, he asked the group, "If you were going to float down the river in a boat, what would you bring with you?"  The little girl in the picture above cried out, "Bath toys!"  The ranger led a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the doomed rafters' adventure. (Bring bath toys?)

 Bernie and Elinor relaxed, while Dave and I drove to Cape Royal, a scenic outlook twenty miles farther along the Rim.

 The highlight of the trail at Cape Royal was a peek-a-boo arch through which we could see the Colorado River.

It began to rain while we were there, and the sight of clouds above the canyon was unforgettable..

Dave rested up before dinner at the lodge.  The food was amazingly good for a spot so remote as the North Rim. After dinner, we came back to our cabin with Bernie and Elinor, rocked in the rocking chairs on the porch, and talked about past and future adventures together.