Havasupai 2010!

I'm finally buckling down to blog about Havasupai. It was so so so so fun. And AMAZINGLY beautiful. I am going back FOR. SURE. Anyway, the drive down was fun. It's been awhile since Judd and I took a long road trip alone. We ended up meeting Judd's dad and crew (Lanelle his girlfriend and her two sons, C.J and Dalton) in Peach Springs, where we stayed the night before embarking on our journey down the Grand Canyon. The drive from Peach Springs to Wallapai hilltop was so pretty! It took us about an hour and the scenery changed about 5 times in the hour. Hard to describe...it was so pretty. The hike in was not bad at all! Here we are a few pictures from the trip down.







I was really excited when we started to see water because I knew we were getting close!


We got into the village, where Steve, Lanelle and the boys where staying, and rested in their motel room for a bit.


Then we finished the last 2 miles of the hike to the campground. I loved the campground! It was surrounded by the creek/river and the high walls of the canyon kept the site out of the sun for a good part of the day. It was really beautiful! It got dark super early. We seriously went to bed at like 8:30 every night. Some pics of us at the campground and the campground itself.




There are 4 main waterfalls in Havasu. The first one you come to (on the way to the campground) is called Rock Falls. This one was a new falls created in the big flood of 2008. We didn't swim here, but it sure was pretty to look at!


The next one is Havasu falls, and this is super close to the campground. We did most of our swimming here. There weren't very many deep pools to swim in. I guess those were destroyed with that same big flood that created Rock Falls. It was still so beautiful. There was a lot of shade to sit in and we spent a lot of time relaxing here at Havasu falls.





The next one is Mooney falls. This one is like 200 feet tall. It was SO pretty! The hike down to it was C-razy! You basically scale this rock cliff. There are chains and spikes along the way to hold on to. I thought I would be really scared, but it wasn't that bad. It was exciting to be doing something like that, and well worth it at the bottom. It was indescribably beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice at all.










The last major falls before you get to the Colorado river are Beaver Falls. It's about a 3 mile hike from Mooney Falls. The terrain was nuts! Not hard, but you would never imagine that you would find that kind of scenery in the grand canyon. You have to hike through a mile or so of THICK grapevines. It's so green there...not the barren desert you would imagine. We didn't quite make it to Beaver Falls unfortunately. We were SO close when Steve fell and did some MAJOR damage to his ankle, so we turned around and went back. He was a trooper. I can't believe he hiked all the way back on that ankle.






The hike back out wasn't bad either. The switchbacks at the end were steep and kinda long, but not bad. We slept in Steve's motel room the night before we left and got up at 1:00 in the morning to hike out and avoid the heat. We also needed to get an early start on driving home. Hiking out in the dark slowed us down, but sure made it nice temperature wise. We saw some coyotes about 100 or so yards away at one point...after that I hiked a lot faster :). I was afraid there were gonna stalk us and try to have us for breakfast. haha. We got to the switchbacks just as the sun was beginning to rise. We took a break and ate some breakfast and some of the dogs from the village found us there and hung out with us. They hiked with us the rest of the way. It was cute how they would stop and wait for us when we took our short little breathers. I really wanted to take them home with me.





The trip was so fun! I can't wait to go back. If you've never been there and you enjoy hiking, you should seriously plan a trip. You most definitely won't regret it!