Roadtrip po národných parkoch – red-eye domov – deň 16

Doobedie opäť v bazéne a čítanie pod slnečníkom. Poobede sme sa zbalili, vrátili auto na letisku (ja celá natešená, že to nemusím robiť sama) a čakali na nočný let. Tiež s knižkou. (A s burritami.)

Mišo išiel ráno po prílete do práce a deti dospávali.

Vyše 1600 najazdených míľ, 6 národných parkov, nie úplne všetko podľa plánu, ale prežili sme. Nejaké dojmy snáď ostanú aj deťom. Kubo toto napísal na tretí deň v škole (zadanie bolo: true story of one time in your life):

The Grand Canyon is probably the biggest canyon on Earth. It is so huge that on one whole trip up and down you wouldn’t be able to see it all. How do I know? Well, I have been to The Grand Canyon. I camped with my family on the south rim of the Grand Canyon for two days and then we went down into the Grand Canyon.

The hike itself took a few hours (by “A few hours” I mean that I don’t remember, but I think it was about 5 hours). That meant A couple of hours in the rising heat on the way down. The rising heat was basically these two facts: One, because the elevation, on the bottom it was about 20 degrees fahrenheit more than on the top. And two, me and my family started hiking in the morning so at first it was really cool and not hot, but then the sun rose and it got hotter and hotter throughout the day.

Still we were hiking downwards right? So I had expected it would be quite easy. But the downwards part was only about two to three kilometers so at first it was a little too steep down. The rest of the fourteen and a half kilometers (about 9 miles) was straight with almost no elevation.

When we got to the camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon we found our campsite and put our stuff down. We didn’t really have that much stuff because everything that you bring down into the canyon, you have to bring back up. There was also a nice little stream of water really close to the campsites so we actually bathed in it for a while. It wasn’t as good as some of the pools that I’ve been to but then again it wasn’t a pool in the first place.

Remember what I said that whatever you bring down you have to bring back up? Well because of that we didn’t bring our tents. So we laid out a tarp and put sleeping bags on it and that’s how we slept. I thought I would get a good rest after the hike but the rain didn’t think so. It started raining at about 02:40 am and that woke us up. We grabbed another tarp and covered ourselves with it. We put our hiking boots on, under the tarp and me and my sister went to a campsite with a little roof on the side. When my mom and dad packed things up and went under the roof too we decided we should start hiking because once it gets hot it’s not going to be fun hiking up.

The first three quarters of the hike were fine but then it started to get warm. That wasn’t that bad but once it got warm the weather started to get hot. So it was really uncomfortable on the way. In the last half mile we were all exhausted, but I can’t even describe how happy I felt once we were waiting for our shuttle at the shuttle bus stop at the top of Grand Canyon.

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