Miles 100-163. Water makes you walk one step further. Or five.

1 Day before the start.

We left our car in Flagstaff and instantly missed it. He’s black and bulky and reminds us of a bulky black lab dog that lived in Peaches (the orchards in British Columbia where we worked). And the best of all is that it has heating. I will miss him every cold morning.

It’s not too far from the highway, so we walked there and started hitchhiking. Three hours and two gentle, fun rides later, we’re at Grand Canyon Village. After setting up the tent at Mather Campground, we visited the community library. He just moved into a new building where a bank used to be, so the walls are, stereotypically, a sad shade of white. The librarian, a very lovely lady, invites me to help her put up Halloween decorations to add a little color, so I spend some fun, quality time sticking bats on the walls.

We begin our walk at the Tip Off.

– a place about four miles from the Grand Canyon. You go down, go back and continue south. At 9 in the morning you can already feel the heat. I am amazed by the tenacity of life inside the canyon: it clings to rocks, gets into cracks, leaks water from cracks, and grows exposed to the wind and sun, perhaps a little wrinkled, but alive.

Climbing up, I realize that humans also like to venture deep into the canyon, often without water, for some unknown reason, despite signs warning of elevation, heat stroke, and dehydration.

Not surprisingly, the park responds to about 294 SAR incidents a year.

I could never run a marathon, but I can walk one every day.

– when there is something good to walk towards. Water is always a good motivator.

Our first water stop is McDonald’s in Tusayan. It’s free and has ice cubes, which makes pouring it from the glasses into our bottles a little awkward, but it’s worth it when, a couple of hours later, you still have cold water.

Immediately after Tusayan, we see three javelins and two tarantulas.

We planned to do 20 miles the first day, but the trail was so flat that we reached the 20 mile mark at 3 pm. There is a Pink Jeep Tours vehicle parked next to the viewing tower, and as the tour group climbs the tower, the guide chats with us and fills our bottles with cold water. We decide it’s too early to camp, so we walk six more miles to the next water source. Tomorrow it is again about 40 miles to the next source of good, reliable water.

There’s a moose doing karaoke late into the night, and when we wake up, a pack of coyotes are starting their chorus practice. We walk before the sun rises. From the forest, wild horses watch us and gallop away when we notice them.

The trail is flat and easy, without much shade.

We pitch our tent at the junction with a wildlife tank and watch a huge full moon rise on one side and wind farms spin peacefully on the other.

Two more days until we reach Flagstaff, or so we had planned, but the weather had other plans and that whole Flagstaff vs Big Storm chapter requires a separate blog post.

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