02 May 2006 Tuesday

We sat an alarm to get up early, we want to be on the trail by 6am.  It’s cool up here on the rim, in the 30’s this morning.  But at the bottom of the canyon, the lows are only in the 50’s and 60’s and the daytime highs can get into the 90’s by the river.  We got our stuff together, threw the last few things into our backpacks and made it to the trailhead by 6… right on time.

The hike down into the canyon was beautiful!  We didn’t see any of the mule rides while we were on the trail, but we saw plenty of evidence (phew!).  We stopped and talked with a few folks on the trail and got to Indian Gardens campground and found there was only one other camp set up and they weren’t home.  We set up camp and saw the first of several mule trains coming thru.  We ate brunch- about 10am.  We don’t really have an agenda today, except to hike out to Plateau Point for a sunset dinner tonight, about a 1.5 mile hike, mostly level.

We just lounged around camp for the afternoon.  A couple of hours before dark we got our dinner stuff together and headed out to Plateau Point.  This hike goes out on one of the plateaus in the canyon (thus the name) and leads out to a few rock out crops that overlooks the Colorado River.   We took our camp stove out, had dinner and stayed for the sunset.  No dinner reservations required and the most exquisite view!  We had enough daylight to hike most of the way back and we had our headlamps to make it the rest of the way.  On the way back we startled some deer that were browsing just off the trail (they startled us just as much!)  We came back, had a sip of wine and fell fast asleep.

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