Roughin' It in the Grand Canyon

I think anyone who has graduated high school should be really proud of themselves. It is a big accomplishment. My goal was to finish strong. Ever since I was a kid, my mother said that if you keep your grades up, you can choose anywhere in the United States to travel to after you finish high school. If anyone knows my mother, she keeps her word. So of course I kept up my grades, for the most part. Taking AP classes my senior year was probably not the best decision I have ever made. If I were to do it over again, I would have enjoyed my last year without the overload of my school work. But I pulled myself together and graduated with a pretty decent GPA.

So before my graduation, my mother presented me two options:

1) Throw a big grad party  

2) Plan a trip anywhere in the U.S.

I am no fool. I chose to travel. Duh. So we researched some of my desired destinations, but both decided that the Grand Canyon was the place to go. I had never been to the Grand Canyon and wanted to do something active. We booked a hot air balloon ride for the first day. It wasn’t as scary as I imagined it would be. It was very peaceful, and of course the view was incredible. Then for the next three days, we would be hiking the Grand Canyon with the AOA tour group. The trip included camping near the Havasupai Village at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the oldest Native American civilization located in the US. Neat right?

The first day of hiking, our tour guide told us that the level of hiking wouldn’t be too extraneous. My definition of extraneous was on a different level than his. I seriously was not expecting the difficultly of the hike. My mother and I did not train for the hiking, which was a poor choice. I don’t know what we were thinking when we signed up for the tour. I was feeling it within the first twenty minutes and that was only going downhill. The scorching sun also felt really great when we had to hike for ten miles out in the open. If we didn’t stay hydrated, we would have died. There is no question about it. We were really happy to reach our campsite at the end of the first day.

There was one slight problem for my mother and me though. Our bags had been kept in the trailer... at the top of the freaking Grand Canyon! Our bags that contained all our clothes, toothbrush, socks, etc. We had none of it. All I can say is that we got a true camping experience. In all of our pictures, we are in the same disgusting clothing. We visited three waterfalls and got to go in the water, which was refreshing for our consecutive three day filth. I jumped off this one waterfall, which was exhilarating. The cliff was slippery and I almost decided not to jump off. I was really proud of myself for taking a leap of faith, literally.

The last day, there was an option to be taken up to the top via helicopter. My mom told me I could either take the helicopter or hike to the top. Although the helicopter would have been cool, I wanted to hike. I wanted to be able to say that I hiked to top of the Grand Canyon. Also we got to go at our own pace, which meant we could take as many pictures and rest stops as we pleased. We were really happy to see our bags once we reached the top, but by then it didn’t really matter. I was just happy to have had an adventure with my mom, celebrating my graduation.