Kuan Yee Han’s Blog

I shall now go back in time to Saturday night, February 16, 2008. After driving 5 hours from Zion, I entered Grand Canyon National Park from the East Entrance. There were not many cars which would enter from this entrance at night, and as such, I ended up not paying the entrance fee because there was no one at the gantry.

In any case, I should have bought the $80 National Park Annual Pass, given that I already planned to go to quite a number of parks. Instead, I ended up paying the single entrance fee ($25) for every park that I visited.

Money aside. I spent the night staying in Bright Angel Lodge, designed in 1935 which has a natural, rustic character, and is a Registered National Historic Landmark. I stayed in the Standard Lodge Room with shared bathroom. You can find out more about Bright Angel Lodge here. I paid for about $70.45 (incl taxes) for the room. Good that I did not pay more for the attached bathroom because I only use it for less than 30 mins. The room is relatively smaller than the King Size bedroom that I had in Zion.

Knowing that I plan to do a hike in Grand Canyon the next day, I decided to sleep early and wake up earlier to catch the sunrise. I caught one when I was in Lake Tahoe. That one was a wrong move. We were at a ridge so the wind was very very strong. The face was numb and can hardly talk also.

This time, the atmosphere was calm. Just a bit chilly in the morning. Although you can see the sun rising, but you can witness how the lighting of the whole scenery changed. How the shadow of the canyon changes. It was just a spectacular view.

Nearby Bright Angel Lodge, there’s this Studio Lookout tower. “Nestled into the canyon’s edge at Bright Angel Lodge, this facility blends into the landscape, as it provides panoramic views and endless photo opportunities.”

“It opened around 1914, and was a place where early visitors could warm themselves by the fireplace, shop for postcards and use a telescope to view the surrounding area. Today it continues to offer visitors a bird’s eye view of the majestic landscape and a place to shop for rock and fossil specimens, souvenirs, photography artwork and books.” Me just outside the Lookout Studio

Not sure if you can see from the picture below, just about slightly right off the center, on top of the shadow from the bottom of the picture, there’s this faint trail. That’s the trail I would be heading towards which will lead me to Plateau Point. I will be able to see Colorado River from there. It’ll be about 1km elevation drop which is quite a drastic difference.

I was getting ready to hike down Bright Angel Trail which will be a total distance of about 12 miles to Plateau Point and back. What’s tough about Grand Canyon trail is that you started off by hiking downwards (which is supposedly be easier). Once you reach the bottom, you’ll have to hike all the way up again. But in this time, it was a bit different for me. Hiking down is much tougher for me. You’ll know why in the next blog post.

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