Hiking the Kaibab Trail, Then Rain

Wifi upload is not faring well. I guess when you're in a national park, you're supposed to be enjoying the wilderness, right? Chris woke up to a beautiful sunrise while the rest of us slept in until 6:20. We packed up and headed out toward the trail. It's 14 miles long and hikers share it with the mule riders. I think you know where I'm going with this (see photos). We had to step over mule poop mines and pools of urine.  Luckily, they eat a lot of hay, so the smell was tolerable. We hiked about 2 miles one way and it took 1.5 hours. It was all downhill and medium difficulty--imagine doing the stairstepper machine for that long. We then had to work our way back out and up. That took about 2 and a half hours more and it was like doing lunges at the gym the whole time. Worth the view, though. Lots of small animals. We had a sandwich and sat in the lodge for a couple of hours, enjoying the floor to ceiling-window view. The clouds started to roll in so I took a couple of pictures and we decided to shower up and have a glass of wine while the kids relaxed.  Our dinner is in the lodge at 6 and all the tables have a great view. The other dinner choices are a buffet (Yelp said it was bad), deli (nah...we eat that for lunch) and a bar (not great for the kids and we brought our own). Tonight we were going to attend the 7:30 lecture led by the Ranger about Anasazi pottery making but we were pooped out by 8. Maybe tomorrow.  Another great day.