Grand Canyon - Indian Gardens Campground

We arrived at Indian Gardens slightly before lunch and it was a welcome sight.

At a bit less than 90 degrees it felt quite pleasant compared to the heat at Phantom Ranch. Altitude does make a difference.

The campground for those staying overnight is off to one side away from the trail. This is quite helpful since there are always people going up and down, even at night.

So Kelli picked out a good campsite with a shed and table. At midday it was in the sun but in the late afternoon it would be in the shade of the cliff.

The South Rim.

Some of us walked down to a pond area where we could bathe our feet. You have no idea how good the water feels. It's now a week later as I write this blog and parts of the soles of my feet still hurt.

It's not much of a pool but you take what you can get.

Kelli put the snorers down at the far end of our camp spot. That is my single person tent in the foreground. After lunch I crawled into it and had a wonderful nap. I woke really refreshed, probably because the temperature was just so pleasant compared to the heat of the night before.

The toilets were clean here in Indian Gardens and the whole camp ground appeared to be in much better condition than Phantom Ranch.

At 4pm we went to a talk by a young Park Ranger. She had a lot of information about restoring the population of Condors in the Canyon. As she gave her talk and moved around, I wondered if she was a ballet dancer in a earlier part of her life.

So then she did her impression of the Condor mating dance and I was convinced she had studied ballet. It turned out that she was a music major from California who decided to become a Park Ranger.

The Condor egg is quite large but this is the extent of the nest. The Condors almost became extinct in the USA but they discovered that if you removed the egg from the nest, the condors would lay another and if you removed the second egg, possibly even a third. This was the magic trick that enabled them to increase the population of the birds. She also talked about the ravens and turkey vultures that also fly in the canyon.

Raj helps move and set up the tent. Note the sophisticated hammer. Other than Kelli, Raj was the fittest of the group by far since he is into karate.

Nirjal is into elegant footware.

I am into improving procedures, not with toilet paper, but the method of dispensing the stuff. For some reason or other, throughout the canyon, they installed these gigantic toilet roll holders. There is nothing wrong with that idea, but they installed a version that does not have an axle and they use the thinnest paper they can find that rips easily. The weight of the roll makes it very difficult to pull the paper out and it rips, usually inside the container. So you have to fiddle about trying to get the paper to appear. You get some and then it rips again. You swear again.

Lunch. I know I was hungry but all the food tasted pretty good and there was plenty of it. The medical guys were discussing our intake of calories compared to how much we were burning up and I think their conclusion was that we were burning up more than we were taking in.

My water bag developed a small leak and it was fixed with Gorilla Tape. Towards the end, my tube seemed to stop working and we couldn't work out why. So from then on I most used Gatorade bottles.

It was exceedingly pleasant at this campsite. We sat for quite a while talking about our different music tastes and just things in general. I really enjoyed their company throughout the trip. One was very intense, one a joker, another very talkative and one serene and almost mystical. Their idea is to get together two or three times a year and go on some sort of trip together so that they get away from the pressures of work. It's a great idea.

A bit before sunset, some of the party headed off to a lookout point at the end of Plateau Point to watch the sunset. (This photo was taken from the South Rim). The blister on my foot hurt so Narmil and I sat back at the camp by the water tap and talked to people as they passed by. It was a most pleasant way to spend the evening. We discovered we were going to be in London about the same time so we are hoping to meet for lunch one day.

Meanwhile, the others made it out to the end of the Plateau Point trail and were rewarded by the sight of two condors who landed about thirty feet away from them. I'm hoping somebody send me a photo so that I can post it here.

The lights at Kolb Studio at the South Rim. Tomorrow, that point would be where we would emerge at the the top of the trail.