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about 15 or so 4-6 person rental cabins, several shower and bathroom buildings to serve each 4 cabins, one restroom facility for the meeting hall, one real honest to god public telephone, a Rangers residence, a fire fighting facility, and an assortment of buildings to service the mule concession the raft companies, and the park service, and a partridge in a pear tree.

There are even, in fact, 2 private residences near the bridge that crosses the Bright Angel Creek near it's mouth at the river.

That evening I had a steak dinner in the main hall. It was wonderful. The steak was a 1 1/2 inch thick New York strip, cooked to a perfect medium rare/medium over charcoal. With it were, a garden salad of great variety, baked potato with sour cream, mixed veggies, cornbread, and chocolate cake for desert.

Max and Frank had elected to save money and eat their freeze dried camp food. So they'd packed that and a stove in with them.

That night I had the strangest night's sleep I believe I've had in many years. I dreamed of many obscure and/or fictitious situations and people including college girlfriends, Vietnam, some kind of serious threat to my mother, etc. I woke myself on several occasions by calling out in my sleep, and may have caused the guy in the bunk below me some loss of sleep. Similar strange dreams occurred the next afternoon as you'll read below. I believe this was part of the phenomenon that the Canyon is for me. I believe the GC is a sort of spiritual focal point and source in my life, and when I return there I always encounter a reawakening of some sort. I think I was resolving old unfinished mental issues in slumber in the bowels of creation; or, I may just be full of shit; and it was the product of a underconditioned, badly sleep deprived, guy with a chest wall injury hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

The next morning we woke to rain and cold. I had a wonderful all-you-can-eat breakfast of scrambled eggs pancakes bacon fruit, toast, and OJ. Max and frank ate freeze dried.

We were apprehensive about the hike, as the weather reports were that it was going to rain all day; and there were even rumors that it was snowing at the south rim. It takes normal humans 6-8 hours to hike out the Bright Angel Trail, and we had no cold weather or rain gear.

We began to walk out through the ranch toward the river. Within the first 500 yards, my T-shirt was soaked through and the 45 degree temp was getting to me. Contemplating the concept that it was going to get steadily colder the higher we ascended, I spoke up and announced: "Hey guys ! We're gonna die ! We'll get hypothermia before we're half way out of here. Let's see if they've had some cancellations so we can spend another night here."

We did, they had, and we stayed.

We napped, and waited, and by that afternoon the rain had stopped. I went for a hike on the River Trail while Max and Frank went up the North Bright Angel trail a ways. The light beginning to make it's way through the clearing storm clouds created dramatic effects on the looming peaks.

Max and Frank were forced to suffer through one of those steak dinners with me that night because the extra stay meant they had run out of trail food.

Later we went to a campfire program where a rangerette told the story of Powell's river expedition through the Canyon.

She also told us the story of the water supply for all of the park having to be pumped from a spring half way down the north side of the canyon due to the park services short sightedness 100 years ago when water rights to the Colorado River were being allocated. This is part of the reason for the existence of the second or "Silver Bridge" that carries that pipeline across the river to begin up to the south rim.

Other interesting tidbits were the statistics that the average length of visit by a Grand Canyon visitor is 4 hours; and that, of the 10 million visitors per year to the canyon, only 1 percent ever venture below the rim. I guess we aren't just your average canyon visitors.

The next morning the sun was shining and we began the beautiful ascent up the Bright Angel trail. This again is a groomed mule trail. So, even though it?s a 9 mile uphill trudge, there's nothing tricky about it.

We stopped at about the 1/2 way point at "Indian Gardens". This is a huge area, aptly named for it's lush stands of Cottonwoods and other vegetation. It's so extremely verdant because of the presence of much constantly flowing and abundant water in "Garden Creek". There is a large campground and an extensive National Park Service facility with many structures and large meeting buildings, mule corrals, a ranger's headquarters, etc.

I crested out about 3:00 PM. Max and Frank were out about an hour sooner. We went immediately to the Bright Angel Lodge restaurant and ordered their biggest greasiest burgers.

Then we hustled on over to Hopi point to shoot the sunset. This turned out to be especially pretty, partly due to the low clouds hanging within the canyon.

The next morning we headed out for Flagstaff to get Frank set up for the remainder of his stay, and to visit the Wupatki ruins; but not before witnessing the glorious early morning spectacle of clouds rising out of the canyon viewed from Mather Point.

I really liked downtown Flagstaff. It is replete with sporting goods stores, photography stores, small restaurants, and boutiques. These all mixed with apartments, libraries, and other businesses. It's kind of like a Greenwich Village of the west.

We cruised old Route 66 and got a great deal on a suite at a Best Western for the night, $66.00 for the three of us. I think this was due to it's being across the street from the railroad tracks (there is another Best Western in town), and my using my "Registered Old Fart" (AARP) card.

Then, after greasing up at a "Jack in the Box" (first time I'd ever been to one), we headed out to see the volcano country and the Wupatki ruins.

The weather was hit and miss to say the least, with intermittent rain and clouds; but we seemed to hit the dry episodes fairly well in our stops.

The Sunset Crater area encompasses a vast segment of terrain. It is probably about 50 X 100 miles of land north and northeast of Flagstaff that is pockmarked by several dozen old volcano cones. Some are what now are referred to as "mountains" (the San Francisco peaks), some little more than rises in the landscape. Many are identifiable as cinder cones, and many are very colorful due to the minerals in the soil of their rims.

Max and I had scrambled through the lava field of one old volcano on a visit to the area about 7 years ago, and I remember the stone was still as sharp and abrasive as if it had just cooled.

The Wupatki Monument is in the same area as the crater region, and is organized around several ancient native American dwelling sites constructed be ancestors of several line of plains Indians. The "Sinagua (a Spanish term meaning without water) groups" which included peoples of, or ancestral equivalents of: the Anasazi, the Hisatsinom, the Hohokam, and Cohonina, along with possibly others found this valley very arable about 1100 AD or so. Probably due to the combination of new volcanic soil and minerals from massive eruptions about 100 years previously, and a turn to a wetter climate in the area. The groups settled and cooperated in the area for almost 100 years then gradually abandoned the same area as the climate changed back to more arid, and the soil became exhausted.

There are several sites open to the public, and from "Citadel Ruin" we viewed one of the best sunsets of the trip.

That night we returned to Flagstaff and went to a great Mexican restaurant "El Charro" in, what turned out to be, the Mexican-American section of town. The ambiance was great, including the less than artistically refined Mariachi band. Later we retired to "our Suite" at the Best Western for late night "Shock Theater" on TV and sleep.

The next day we regretfully said our good-byes to Frank at the Flagstaff airport where he had rented his car to visit the vortices at Sadona. Max and I headed out for the long drive home.

Thus ended yet another epic adventure. I'm sure we're all ,even now, ready to plan something more heroic and astounding for the very near future. Possibly mud sliding in Tibet, bicycling Route 66, or full contact Chinese Checkers.

Whatever fortunes await our merry band, you can rest assured they wont be ordinary.

Next time we only hope Tom can make it to complete " The 4 Hoarse Men of the Antediluvious ".