Garry and Joan; Travels for the less(or more) adventurous!: Phantom Ranch

So I thought I'd lead off with another film clip just to give you an idea of what Phantom ranch is like .It is probably one of the toughest places to get accommodations in the world and cabins or beds in a dorm usually sell out a year in advance. Joani and I only got in by going through a tour company. Why is it so tough to book a space, you ask? Well I'm here to explain. You can only get there one of 2 ways. #1 by hiking down one of the trails. ( there are three in total) or riding on the back of a mule down the same trails. Whether you're in a cabin or the dorm, you're sharing space with a group of people. There's only one toilet and a sink in the dorm or cabins, so if you want or need a shower you need to go to another building that also is sort of dorm like. The meals have strict seating times with 3 menu options, Vegetarian Chili, Beef Stew, Or steak dinner. Everyone gets the same salad and desert, and you have 45 minutes to eat. From the month of May to September the daytime temperatures average well over 100 degrees F, with very little wind. A true luxury resort! Truth to tell, besides all the thing I just told you this is the only option besides camping at the bottom of the canyon.

We got here At about 2:30 in the afternoon and had 1 and 1/2 days to rest and recuperate for our hike back out.

Bright Angel Creek is a small Colorado river tributary that drifts through Phantom ranch right beside our cabin so after drinking about a gallon of the best lemonade I've ever tasted and throwing our backpacks on our bunks, Joani and I and our new hiking family/friends went down there and soaked our aching legs and feet in this little creek while fish nibbled at our toes. These fish could have been piranhas and I would have fought them off for a space to cool my weary bones! After about an hour though I felt a little better and walked around our little Oasis to see how we would spend our day and a half. One pleasant diversion turned out to be something called ranger talks. While I think it depends on the individual ranger stationed at Phantom Ranch, while we were there, we were lucky enough to have a personable, educated, informed young man who referred to himself as "Ranger Dan" and held two educational seminars per day on the area. Both days at 4:30 and 7:30 he would hold court in one of two different areas of the ranch grounds to educate and inform anyone who wanted to attend. He talked about the Flora, Fauna, as well as the dangers and perils in the Grand Canyon. He seemed to love his job and was very passionate and knowledgeable about the region and I don't mind admitting I attended all four sessions that ran during our stay and enjoyed them immensely.

Ranger Dan as I said gave 4 seminars. One was on Canyon Safety but as I've stated, we had Addie and Bret, so I wasn't worried with them looking out for us. There was also some cool stuff about the plants we were coming across but I know your not interested in that. So I'll just tell you the stuff I found most interesting, facts about the Fauna life in the Grand Canyon. One of his seminar contained facts about the birds of the Grand Canyon and I can honestly tell you that if I saw a Raven, Turkey Vulture or California Condor flying overhead I'd be able to identify which it was from a distance. If you're not interested in that, How about Lizards.

These guys were everywhere. Bigger, smaller, different colours. But what I found cool was the fact that almost all of them did push ups. That's right, push ups. Even when they were close to us, they would hop up on a rock and as they say in the army "give me twenty". Didn't really understand it until Ranger Dan explained that this was a mating ritual. This was how the males impressed the females!! Hey baby check me out, I can drop and do twenty without breaking a sweat. Makes it a little easier to understand those steroid enhanced guys walking around in singlets with big arms and veins popping.

Too bad they don't know what steroids actually are doing to them!

This guy clearly couldn't be bothered doing steroids or pushups, but hey us couch potatoes also gotta live!

The next thing I think you might find interesting about one of Ranger Dan's seminars was when he spoke about night creatures. Tarantulas, Bats, and my favourite, Scorpions. He spent our last evening talking about these crazy critters and then when he was finished with his seminar he took us on a Scorpion walk. Turns out Scorpions glow under a black light so our last night we went walking around looking for scorpions and I'm here to tell you, we didn't have to go far. These poisonous creatures were everywhere! In maybe as little time as 15 minutes we saw perhaps 10 scorpions. Our camp was infested.

This was a shot my friend Michele took which was clearer than the one I got.

I'm also including mine because if you look at it closely, you can see it's shape a little better perhaps.

We left this seminar feeling creeped out and I think both Hazel and I took forever to get to sleep in our dorm with visions of these little creepy crawlies dancing in our heads.
Speaking of our dorm, this was our shared cabin.

Eight people the first night, seven the second. Like I said, Luxury accommodations.

The other thing we got to do in our day and a half at the bottom of the canyon was go for a hike. Yeah I'm serious, after hiking for 11 hours and resting the rest of that day, we got up the next day and went for a short hike. Our fearless leader Addie took us out around the area just to work the lactic acid out of our legs and see what the area was like. We took an approximately two hour stroll in a circle that allowed us to cross both suspension bridges crossing the Colorado river. See the beach where rubber rafts docked on the white water rafting tours, and as much as anything, I think the premise was she just didn't want us getting lazy. Hey we still needed to hike out.

First bridge

Joani and Addie Climbing a wicked staircase.

At one point in time I told Michele that I thought we were twins separated at birth, which she thought was fine as long as we agreed that I was the odd twin, but get a load of this photo!