Believe me! This trip was not like Chevy Chase’s iconic scene in the movie VACATION where he stops at a National Park for 10 seconds then herds the family back into the car to travel to their next destination. Although you may think we were just as bad, because we visited 6 National Parks in Arizona and Utah in just 10 days. This is how it all came about.
On a whim, about six months ago, a college friend from 40 years ago who lives in Phoenix contacted me and said, “Are you doing much hiking lately? Judging by your Facebook posts you seem to be out in the woods a lot. How about getting together and hiking the Grand Canyon?” I thought about it a bit then said to my wife, “What would you say if I told you I wanted to visit Mark in Phoenix and hike the Grand Canyon?” To my delight she said, “Go, you always wanted to check that off your bucket list.”
So, my incredible trip began. Once we decided the best time of year to go (late September/early October because of the heat in Arizona & Utah), we started to plan. It didn’t make much sense to travel all the way to the Grand Canyon and not also visit some of the National Parks in southern Utah. So we ultimately decided to visit and hike – Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks (NP). Wow, that’s a lot of driving and hiking and exploring in a short period of time. But in the end it was all worth it, despite the short time at each location.
My plane arrived in Phoenix mid-day on Monday. We spent the rest of the day making sure we had all our equipment and supplies. A trip to Wal-Mart was in order to get the food we needed for our cooler and snacks for the numerous hikes.
Day 1: Grand Canyon, Part 1
We awoke early Tuesday morning, packed the car, and started the four plus hour drive to the Grand Canyon. We had decided to camp on Tuesday night and were fortunate enough to get a campsite at Mather Campground, right in the park. We arrived mid-day and set up camp. With the rest of the day to ourselves we decided to hike a portion of the rim trail. I recommended that we didn’t overdue our enthusiasm and walk too much because we needed to save some energy for our big descent to the bottom of the canyon on Wednesday. 
By the end of the day we had logged about 5 miles and spent a great deal of time just staring at the magnificence of the canyon. The walk was just enough to stretch out the muscles and get acclimated to the higher elevation (over 7000 feet). We burned a nice campfire for a few hours that evening and hit the sleeping bags before 10 pm. The nearly full moon was very bright and illuminated the campground most of the night. The moon would become a major asset for us in the coming days.
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