Conquering a Half Marathon & The Grand Canyon
Entering 2024, we are excited about another year of travel! Our journey began a year ago in Rolla, MO. Along the way, we have accomplished amazing things and witnessed some of the most beautiful sights. We kicked off the new year by conquering a half marathon and then took the following weekend to visit the Grand Canyon National Park.
Mile: 27,398
Quote of the Blog: “You can prepare all you want, but if you don’t roll the dice you will never be successful.”–Shai LeBeouf
Song of the Blog: “Hell of a View” - Eric Church
Over the past few months Amity and I have taken on a challenge to do a half marathon at each location we go to. She has completed one in both Missouri and Washington, while I have only recently joined in with the half in Anacortes. Since moving down to Buckeye we have been filling our hours after and before work with countless miles of training. It has been fun to see the scenery change so dramatically from running in Washington to here in Arizona. We went from seeing Harbor Seals and Otters daily, to running past cacti in the Desert. This is one of the great elements of our travels!
Leading up to our race day, we were both hit with a nasty cold! My started over New Year’s and was all but gone. Amity was far from being through it. She had got to the point where it was a day to day decision on if she was going to do the run. On race day, Amity pulled from down deep and made the decision to do it. Personally, I was insanely impressed with this, because I knew how she was feeling. YUCK!
As the race gun fired off the start, Amity was running into the bathroom. I decided to just take off and see her along the way. The start to any run is chaotic. Tons of people everywhere, you are trying to pace yourself so you don’t kill yourself right away and there is a lot of anxiety about what is going to transpire over the next 13.1 miles. I knew I started to fast, and was curious to how it was going to play out. Amity on the other hand, she casually came out of the bathroom and got a nice and easy start to her run. We would only see each other once while passing by each other around the halfway mark, but we celebrated with a high five! By this point, I had made a conscious decision to try to take that starting pace and hold it as long as I could, and I was surprisingly able to hold it for the entire run! I finished with a 1:53:18. This was over 6 minutes faster than my previous time. Amity was not far behind me at a 1:55:08. May it be this was slower than her last race, she did this sick!!! I am so proud of her for being able to do this!!! It is really wild to think about us doing this! We have come a long way in a year, and running has become such a big part of it all.
Recovery from these events takes some time. Last race, I was not able to do a long walk, let alone run for weeks following the race. This time, we are both in a much different place. We are both able to keep going and do not have the same post-race fatigue. This is huge, because the next phase on the adventure was to hop in the car and drive to Northern Arizona to go explore Grand Canyon National Park. The drive up to Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is a really pretty drive. We went from our spring like weather in the Phoenix valley quickly into winter. By the time we got halfway there, we hit snow and ice covered roads. It was comical to realize it actually was January and it is winter. We are very excited to see some snow and play in it for the weekend.
We pulled into Grand Canyon Village with a solid amount of time to go explore around the park. After getting our bareings at the visitor’s center, we found the South Rim Trail. This took us out to some amazing view points; including Mather Point and Yavapai Point. It was so cool to see how the landscape changed from a dense cedar and pine forest to a complete and utter drop off. I personally wanted to walk out on every ledge, while Amity didn’t want me to get within 10 feet of any edge. It was fun to experience some serious exposure on some of the cliff faces!
While walking around we saw all kinds of people. One of our funniest encounters was a man we guessed was from South Africa who looked at us and said, “Does it look the same from everywhere you stop? I’m done.” He was obviously cold, and he wasn’t too wrong. This became out inside joke for the weekend. Another time we were walking down the trail, and two people dressed in full furry costumes came walking down the trail. We burst into laughter. They noticed us, and asked Amity to take their picture for them. At this point I was dying. So many questions and out curiosity was peaking! We continued into a cool interpretive center called, Yavapai Geology Museum. This was a cool building built on the cliff face with glass windows overlooking the canyon. Following this, we headed back to the car to move onto the next spot. On our way to the car we were able to see a Javelina running through the trees. It was really cool to see the little guy. Amity thought they would look more intimedating like a wild boar, while I was surprised by the amount of hair they have. We drove to the furthest west end of Grand Canyon Village, and stopping at the Verkamp Visitor Center. Here we explored inside the Hopi House. This is a really cool Native American dwelling sitting along the rim of the canyon. It had the smallest doors we have seen. Even Amity had to duck her head to get inside. Next door is the El Tovar Lodge. This reminded us of something from Glacier National Park. The lobby has vaulted ceilings built out of large logs. It was very pretty. We decided to get a drink at the El Tovar Cocktail Lounge inside the lodge. We lucked out and got the table right along the window overlooking the canyon. We enjoyed a nice cocktail before moving on to watch the sunset at Hopi Point along Hermit Road. In the winter you can drive this road, but it is closed to bus traffic only in the summer. Even with the road being open to traffic, there was not many people out.
We finished our day with dinner and a movie. We stayed at the Red Feather Lodge in Tusayan, AZ. This was 15 minutes south of the South Rim. It was a cold winter day, so it was pretty dead. We would only imagine how busy this town can get in the summer months. Lucky to us it wasn’t. We were able to walk into the IMax Theater and watch a really cool documentary about the exploration of the Grand Canyon. We learned about John Powell. He was the first person to navigate the entire Grand Canyon section of the Colorado River in a boat. He only had one arm!!! Doing that with two good arms looked wild. Following this, we got dinner at Big E’s Steakhouse. This was a solid spot that we were both happy with.
We got up the next morning well before first light. With the frigid temps, we bundled up and got some water boiling for some Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy (my personal favorite!). We loaded up in the car and headed out to Powell Point on Hermit Road. We had scouted this sunrise spot out last night. Lucky to us, we were the only people there the whole time we watched the sunrise! Along with our hot breakfast, we brought the JetBoil with us to get some hot chocolates dialed up to enjoy with the sunrise. It was truly a special moment. Watching the early morning light paint the canyon walls pink and orange was amazing! This is one of those moments that will stay with us forever.
Our plan for the day was to hike down into the canyon as far as we could. Originally, we wanted to hike down to the river and out, but that would have been over 4,000 vertical feet to hike out of, and we were still in recovery mode from the half marathon last weekend. So, we limited our hike to 7 miles and just over 2,300 vertical feet. This put us way down into the canyon along the South Kaibab Trail. Seeing the canyon from the rim is one thing. Getting down into it is spectacular! The trail did the craziest switch backs and banks around the biggest cliffs. We stopped at Skeleton Point to have lunch and rest out legs before hiking back out. We could see the Colorado river bellow us.
It was so cool to be down in there. It was a sold 15-20 degrees warmer than the rim too. We made the decision that we will someday do a Rim to Rim hike while camping at the bottom of the canyon, but that will be something we have to plan out. Hiking out, we were very happy with our decision to keep out hike more manageable and not trying to take on too much. There was some ice and slick spots at the top in the shade that made the hike harder than it could be. Overall, this was an amazing hike! We can’t wait to come back and hike here again.
We wrapped up our adventure in the Grand Canyon with a drive down Desert View Drive. This was a beautiful way to wrap up a great adventure in the national park. Out last stop was at the Desert View Watchtower. This area features a really cool tower along the southeast rim of the canyon. We were able to climb up into it and enjoy the elevated views overlooking all the grandeur the Grand Canyon supplies. With tired legs, we hopped into the car and headed south over Flagstaff and back into the Phoenix Valley. We were very happy to spend some time in the snow! We look forward to our next adventure into winter. Until then, it’s back to our life in the sunshine and with the cacti.