This was our hiking day. Each time we go camping there’s one day that we all take a little stroll up a mountain. With our “Best Hikes” book in hand, we took the South Rim Trail, which was just next door and rated 2 out of 5 on the difficulty scale. Alas, Ryan was still a hater but he went anyway. The trail started at the Upper Falls, went along the river, then to Lower Falls, the Grand Canyon, and out to a parking lot that we visited just the day before. On our hike, I saw a rainbow, elk, and a yellow-bellied marmot. The walk was rather easy with a couple steep ascents but it was nothing compared to the hike we did in Big Sur. We had a mini-swamp band this year but they were just as complainey. At the end of the hike, Ryan attempted to hitchhike back to the car but no one was willing to pick up his stinky ass so he ended up walking all the way back to the car with his thumb sticking out. The rest of us melters sat around and waited for him to pick us up with no idea how long it would take him to return.

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Once we returned to the campsite, we had brats for lunch and the girls went to the registration office for a hot shower. Ah…that was the most amazing shower ever and the best $3.25 I had spent in a while. It was clean, the water pressure was great, and they were like dorm showers where you get your own stall with a seperate changing section.

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Oh yeah, early in the morning, the park ranger came by to be on bear alert. Apparently there was a bear hanging out in Loop A, which is just two streets away from us in Loop C. I guess Yogi was hungry for another picanic basket.