We had to meet our guide at 8:30 am -- awwk!! -- which involved gobbling Honey Nut Cheerios in the room while we packed up everything and checked out. But at 8:35 -- pretty punctual for us -- we were in the lobby of the historic El Tovar Hotel (at right -- wouldn't it have been cool if we could have gotten reservations there?) meeting Elaine from the Grand Canyon Field Institute, who was going to reveal the secrets of the Grand Canyon to us. 
Elaine's one of those people who makes round-trip hikes to the canyon floor all the time, but she promised us an easy morning hike -- a mile-and-a-half down the Bright Angel Trail and then back up. The trail was fairly crowded -- it's like the superhighway of the Grand Canyon -- so it was hardly a backwoods experience, but it was enough to get us partway down into the canyon to see what it was like. Going down wasn't bad, but like they say, hiking into the canyon is voluntary, hiking back up is mandatory. And of course, no one in the family but me would admit that they needed to stop and catch their breath. But there were plenty of reasons to pause. Elaine had dozens of stories to tell us about the history of the canyon's development, and could point out all sorts of natural wonders -- we got so much more out of our hike than we would have on our own. 
For instance, she identified for us this elk poop on the El Tovar lawn. Can you imagine walking up in the middle of night to go have a pee and looking out your hotel room window to see an elk browsing right there? 
On the trail, Elaine explained to us the four forces that formed the Grand Canyon, which you can remember with the acronym DUDE -- D for deposits (the different rock strata piled on top of each other), U for uplift (the heaving up of tectonic plates), D for downflow (the Colorado River carving its way through the rock), and E for erosion (the winds carving the rockface). She identified the various plants we passed; she pointed out these ancient Indian petroglyphs and some petrified rat poop running down the canyon wall.
We were in luck; we had some amazing wildlife encounters. Of course there were the little rock squirrels all over the place -- these guys are about as afraid of humans as the squirrels in Central Park are. We watched one raucous squirrel sitting out on a rock ledge, chirping so loudly we thought it was a bird. 
But even better, we ran into this pair of bighorn sheep, standing right beside the trail, so close we could have touched them. They didn't seem in any hurry to get away from us, either. It was incredible close up to see how nimble their tiny flexible hooves are on the rocky surface.
And then, way up above the canyon rim, we saw a California condor riding lazily on the thermals rising from the canyon. (Look really closely; it's that tiny black dot in the sky. And that was using my zoom.) These highly endangered birds were extinct from the canyon for several years and were recently reintroduced, with great success -- there are half a dozen living in the canyon now, feeding on all the carrion they can find. Oh, I'll bet the turkey vultures are pissed off about that. 
Once we got back to the top (our hike took about 2 1/2 hours), we had lunch in this historic house, built a century ago for Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, these two early residents of the canyon rim, who ran a business photographing visitors. Their living quarters, furnished with cool Arts & Crafts-style decor, aren't usually open to the public, so that was an excellent perk of the tour. 
After lunch, we walked west along the Rim Trail, getting farther away from the main village with all the hotels etc. We hiked some 3 miles along the rim (mostly level, thank god) and it was amazing how the views changed. We could finally see the Colorado River down at the bottom of the canyon, which had been blocked by various mesas before. It was fantastic -- and best of all, there was a shuttle bus waiting at the end to take us back to the hotel area.
We finally said goodbye to Elaine and left the park around 3 pm, heading south for Phoenix. (Originally we were going to stay at the Canyon two nights, but then we realized that the Diamondbacks game tomorrow is a day game, so we needed to get to Phoenix sooner.) Along the way, we took a side trip through the Coconino National Forest and Oak Creek Canyon to see the red rocks of Sedona. They were beautiful all right, especially since we got there late in the afternoon with the setting sun turning them aglow. But I guess after Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon they seemed a little less spectacular.
South of Sedona, there was another hour-plus drive down to Phoenix. The forest disappeared and in its place was scrubby desert, where the prickly pear cactus was sooned joined by saguaro cactus, the classic shape of cactus that little kids love to draw. We expected to see Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner go whizzing by at any moment.
Bit by bit, the desert turned into the vast Phoenix sprawl. I didn't take a picture because, frankly, you've seen it all somewhere else. It seems like a bizarre sort of conurbation, nothing but chain-store malls and endless suburbs, with a surprisingly small downtown, considering that Phoenix is supposed to be the fifth-largest metro area in the country. Nothing that we could see looked at all historic. By the time we checked into the Holiday Inn Express downtown we were too exhausted to go out (besides, it's like 110 degrees outside -- no exaggeration -- and no one felt like walking in that). So we ordered Pizza Hut dinner to the hotel and crashed, watching TV. Apparently that hike took more out of us than we thought...
