Thanksgiving trip update: I revisited Grand Canyon again after my first time dated back to freshman year summer. Prior to the trip, all of us were debating where to go and I was kinda against the idea of Grand Canyon. My mind was thinking about Crater Lake or Lassen Volcanic National Park in the north. In the end I gave in because the rest haven't been there:( Overall this trip was still pretty enjoyable with this fun group of HK university friends. Since it's not the places that matter the most but the people you go with, I am wondering if someday in the future my girlfriend ask me to go Disneyland again, will it be a fun one?
On thursday 27th december, we flew in Arizona Phoenix Airport and drove 3 hours to stay in hotel in a small city just right outside of South Rim Grand Canyon. The weather was extremely cold. There's sign of snowing and my jacket wasn't for that kind of weather. The next day we headed to Grand Canyon. It's really nothing exciting to me considering I had hiked and camped 3 days 2 nights there before. The view is still the same as 5 years ago wtf, but this time I noticed there are lots of indians:) It's just a day after the Mumbai terrorist bombing and I wonder what's on their minds.
I couldn't remember which trail I hiked before but this time we went down Kaibab Trail. It doesn't really matter because the views all look the same anyway, no matter where you at. It was a tad boring for a 6 hour hike seeing the same rocks. Camwhoring came to rescue nonetheless. In fact we wasted a lot of time taking photos with some really stupid pose that we had to shorten our hike because the sky turned dark. We concluded that hiking is incomplete without photo taking, even that means we are to cut short some journey. I was using my newly bought Nikon D40x but guess what function I was using: Automatic mode:) Did i make a wrong decision on spending couple hundreds on that?
The way back up was actually quite tiring. I guess i haven't done some serious exercise since my half marathon race. It is amazing that 5 years ago I could backpack a heavy load and hiked all the way down/up to the colorado river, more so I wasn't as strong last time. We returned to the top around 4pm before it got dark. After that we drove to Desert View to see the sunset which wasn't that spectacular in my opinion. We spent another night a Travelodge nearby and unluckily we had smoking room and it smelled like shit. How can one possibly love smoking you tell me?
The original plan on the following day was to stop by the newly constructed "skywalk" in West Rim Grand Canyon. We scrapped that because it requires additonal admission fees of at least 50 dollar per person and the ridiculous thing is that with that kind of price you still can't use your camera while on the skywalk:( No camera is totally against our policy since we are kinda hooked to stupid poser thing. Instead, we took the historic route 66 and headed to Oatman Ghost Town in Arizona. A ghost town is a town or city that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed. There are quite a number in Arizona and Nevada region. I bet there are some scary deserted ghost town out there, think about zombies or movie the hills have eyes. Oatman however is not totally abandoned and has since become a tourist spot. It's a only a small town (or shall I say a street?) located 45-minute drive from Kingman.
These are not horses, not mules, they are burros (small donkey). They roam freely on the street and you can buy a bag of carrot and feed them. But once you do that, they will follow you to forever. In the picture above the kid was actually afraid as the burros approaching him for more carrot. It's funny just to see where this poor little kid hung the a bag of carrot:)
cute right?
Coincidentally a charity cowboy show was going on when we were there. The cowboys were showing their gun fight skills. Although it's just empty gun shot, the sound was still pretty loud. We learned that one should never stand behind a burro/donkey/horse because these cute creatures might back-kick you if they are shocked by the sudden gunshot or somehow provoked. After about 2 hours, we left this interesting town of Oatman and headed towards to Las Vegas.
More about vegas next time maybe.
On thursday 27th december, we flew in Arizona Phoenix Airport and drove 3 hours to stay in hotel in a small city just right outside of South Rim Grand Canyon. The weather was extremely cold. There's sign of snowing and my jacket wasn't for that kind of weather. The next day we headed to Grand Canyon. It's really nothing exciting to me considering I had hiked and camped 3 days 2 nights there before. The view is still the same as 5 years ago wtf, but this time I noticed there are lots of indians:) It's just a day after the Mumbai terrorist bombing and I wonder what's on their minds.
I couldn't remember which trail I hiked before but this time we went down Kaibab Trail. It doesn't really matter because the views all look the same anyway, no matter where you at. It was a tad boring for a 6 hour hike seeing the same rocks. Camwhoring came to rescue nonetheless. In fact we wasted a lot of time taking photos with some really stupid pose that we had to shorten our hike because the sky turned dark. We concluded that hiking is incomplete without photo taking, even that means we are to cut short some journey. I was using my newly bought Nikon D40x but guess what function I was using: Automatic mode:) Did i make a wrong decision on spending couple hundreds on that?
The way back up was actually quite tiring. I guess i haven't done some serious exercise since my half marathon race. It is amazing that 5 years ago I could backpack a heavy load and hiked all the way down/up to the colorado river, more so I wasn't as strong last time. We returned to the top around 4pm before it got dark. After that we drove to Desert View to see the sunset which wasn't that spectacular in my opinion. We spent another night a Travelodge nearby and unluckily we had smoking room and it smelled like shit. How can one possibly love smoking you tell me?The original plan on the following day was to stop by the newly constructed "skywalk" in West Rim Grand Canyon. We scrapped that because it requires additonal admission fees of at least 50 dollar per person and the ridiculous thing is that with that kind of price you still can't use your camera while on the skywalk:( No camera is totally against our policy since we are kinda hooked to stupid poser thing. Instead, we took the historic route 66 and headed to Oatman Ghost Town in Arizona. A ghost town is a town or city that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed. There are quite a number in Arizona and Nevada region. I bet there are some scary deserted ghost town out there, think about zombies or movie the hills have eyes. Oatman however is not totally abandoned and has since become a tourist spot. It's a only a small town (or shall I say a street?) located 45-minute drive from Kingman.
These are not horses, not mules, they are burros (small donkey). They roam freely on the street and you can buy a bag of carrot and feed them. But once you do that, they will follow you to forever. In the picture above the kid was actually afraid as the burros approaching him for more carrot. It's funny just to see where this poor little kid hung the a bag of carrot:)
cute right?
Coincidentally a charity cowboy show was going on when we were there. The cowboys were showing their gun fight skills. Although it's just empty gun shot, the sound was still pretty loud. We learned that one should never stand behind a burro/donkey/horse because these cute creatures might back-kick you if they are shocked by the sudden gunshot or somehow provoked. After about 2 hours, we left this interesting town of Oatman and headed towards to Las Vegas.More about vegas next time maybe.
posted by ongngg at 10:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home