27 September 2020
Hermits Rest to El Tovar
(8 miles, +500/-500 feet).

Flagstaff was fun with its cute downtown, excellent latin cuisine, and numerous breweries, but we thought it would be a shame not to do some hiking at the Grand Canyon since we were already so close.   So we booked a room at Bright Angel Lodge and decided to do an afternoon hike today and a morning hike tomorrow before returning to San Diego.

Although we have been to the Grand Canyon several times, we haven’t done the hike along this route before, so it was all new for us.

There is a paved bike trail through here but we opted to follow a use trail that took us through nice shade and closer to the views.

We walked back to Bright Angel Lodge, dropped our stuff at our room, and immediately headed over to El Tovar for dinner.  The bad news is that they said it was an hour and a half wait.  The good news is that they were serving drinks while we waited.  We practiced some social distancing with ours, sitting right on a wall next to the rim trail to watch the sunset.