Grand Canyon Rim to Rim Adventure

Pre-hikes

I wasn't sure even a 12-mile, 3-hour hike would help me train for what would be a 23-mile, 16-hour hike Rim to Rim, but turned out every bit helped 😅

Beautiful but steep Tuacahn hike with 2 days to go

Lookee the cabin we got to stay in 
the night before on the North Rim 😃

Megan and Scott got the Queen bed, 

and Rob and I got the bunks!

We left the North Rim at 6:30 a.m. with 50 degree temp.

Every time I looked up, I thought WOW. It was just so beautiful and surprisingly varied.

And this is where we should've taken a nap under a tree by the river to bypass the heat of the day....

Phantom Ranch

Sitting out the heat for a few hours would've prevented what happened next... Rob got serious heat exhaustion...

... and heat rash all over his legs

(big baby... it was only 112 degrees at the base of the canyon 😱)

So, we told Megan and Scott to go ahead while Rob and I took a long 1 1/2 hour break in the shade of a pavilion. Scott wore Rob's backpack on his front and his own backpack on his back for the last 2 hours uphill to the South Rim.  

At one point, Rob just laid down on the ground and begged me to leave him under a rest stop pavilion for the night. Not an option in my mind. So I prayed for him, and he prayed for him, and then we prayed together. Pretty soon, he realized if he took slow small steps, he could go a lot further between breaks, so we just turtled it to the top of South Rim, 2 hours after Scott and Megan, at 10:15 p.m.

We had been planning to hike back another 23 miles to the North Rim the next day, but ha! that was not going to happen. Instead, we took the 5-hour shuttle back to the North Rim the next morning and called it a win 👍 Rob was amazing. In spite of what he suffered, he said he was happy we'd done it. And now we're basically pros, next level, yup 😂