Day 9

We woke up early the next morning and ate a simple but free continental breakfast at the motel. While we were sitting there, we heard this guy on the phone, who was really pissed off at someone and was complaining about her to the person on the other line. After about 10 minutes of listening to his side of the conversation, he walked away and we went back to our room to pack up our stuff. It was hilarious when we discussed what we thought he was complaining about. I thought he was talking to a good guy friend and was really mad at his ex-girlfriend and he's really emotionally hurt by something she did. Elena laughed. She said he was talking to his girlfriend about this girl who tried to run him over with a car and that he's a drug dealer. LOL. Wow, my brain is really naive when it comes to things like this, haha!

The drive to the Grand Canyon was beautiful. It was strange because you can't see the canyon while you're driving, even when you're like 30 minutes away. So you're looking around and all you see are tall trees to the left and right, and you're wondering where this huge hole in the ground is! When we got to the Grand Canyon National Park, we bought some stuff to cook over our campfire (assuming that we could get this fire started), we played it safe and went with hot dogs. Since it was quite chilly (and the sun was still out), we also bought a bottle of reisling to help keep us warm :) We picked up a 2-person tent that we rented, plus a foam pad to sleep on, and headed to our campsite. Okay, so a 2-person tent is tiny, even if only one person were to sleep in it! For some reason, we didn't get tent pegs with our tent, so our tent was pathetic and wimpy looking. Turns out that everyone brought like 8-person tents that were very sturdy and fashionable looking (for 2 people). They also brought pots and pans and had huge fires going! Yeah ... we were the most primitive people there, haha, but I guess that makes us adventurous.

After setting up our tent, we headed towards one of the viewing points of the canyon. As we were walking, this random car with a young female driver stopped as it passed us, and the girl says to us, 'there are some elks back there'. We said thanks, and after she passed, we gave each other weird looks and laughed, cuz we couldn't figure out why she would stop and tell us that there were elks since we didn't know her! Then it clicked. Elena said, 'ohmygosh, we just got the answer to our question!' About an hour ago, we saw those elks and could not figure out if they were elks or moose, or if an elk is a male and moose is a female of the same animal?! Then we were like, oh well, I guess we don't know. For some reason, God chose to give us an answer! Haha! I love His sense of humor!

We picked an awesome day to be at the canyon, cuz it was a full moon! So they were having a once a month moonlight tour of the canyon. So we went to Mather Point and sat on the rocks until the sunset and the full moon lit the canyon. The canyon is SO amazingly beautiful - every angle, every rock, every shade of color, is just so detailed that no one except God could have imagined and created it! As I started taking pictures, I realized that the camera really doesn't do it justice. Not only are the colors not captured by the camera, but with each picture, only so much of the canyon can be seen. Our eyes in less than a second, can see the entire vastness of the canyon, its infinite angles, its height, depth, the open sky above it ... I almost feel like I'm ruining the beauty by taking pictures of it.

Surprisingly, there were hundreds of people there for the moonlight tour, and by this time, I think the temperature is like 50ish. I had forgotten how bright the moon is! We really could see a lot without a flashlight! As interesting as Ranger Dave was, as he told us about what certain Indian tribes believed the moon to be (the soul of warriors), it was just getting too cold, so we went back to our campsite to get our dinner started. With the help of fire sticks, it wasn't too difficult to get the fire going. The hot dogs were tasty when paired with the reisling (with no cups, we our empty Poland Spring bottles, haha, real classy huh?), and thanks to Phil and Gina, we also had toasted marshmallows. As our firewood started disappearing, we took out all the clothes we had and put on as many layers as possible. I slept with my head inside the sleeping bag and it was still freezing. It was a bit claustrophobic actually, with the tent only about a foot above my head when I'm lying on the ground. As the sun started to rise (around 6ish) it got warmer and I was finally able to sleep for a few hours. Ah my first real camping experience!