Get out of school celebration! Grand Canyon/Jacob Lake

 We decided that for a get out of school celebration we could go over to Jacob Lake, stay in a cabin (still no camping for Paul with his foot in a boot), visit the reopening North Rim of the Grand Canyon and go over to Lee's Ferry/Lonely Dell Ranch and pick some fruit, visit Navajo Bridge.  We did all of those things and it was a great little get away.  We left Friday morning and drove over to the North Rim with a stop in at Jacob Lake for a cookie break along the way.  We first drove out to Cape Royal and walked just far enough in to see Angel's Window and the Colorado River below.  Paul can't go too far in his boot.  Then we stopped off at Vista Encantada on the way back for a picnic lunch.  Next we drove to the Lodge area.  Everywhere wherever we drove there were spots of burned trees.  It was very patchy.  But lots of forest is still left, thank goodness.  The lodge is pretty much a loss.  There is some stonework left and they may be able to include it in whatever the build to replace it.  Surprisingly quite a few of the cabins and administration buildings are still fine.  The water plant was a melted mess.  Overall, though, I was surprised that so much was still ok.  So glad. We still had some time before check-in, so we drove over to Lee's Ferry/Lonely Dell Ranch to see if any fruit was ripe.  Not yet.  We did find a few tree fall apricots that were nearly ripe and pretty tasty.  We drove to the dock area and saw people getting ready to raft the canyon.  We stopped off at Navajo Bridge and enjoyed the view and did see one condor on the bridge below us.  

After that we went and checked in and got unloaded in our little cabin.  There were so many people there when we went for dinner.  We had a long wait, but had fun visiting with a plumber from Prescott on one side and a 4th grade teacher from Orem on the other side.  The plumber was going to hike rim to rim the next morning and the school teacher was with 11 people heading over to the South Rim for a singles group trip. It's always fun to talk to people there while you eat at the bar.  Dinner and more cookies/ice cream were great when we finally got them!  We went out and sat on a log and enjoyed the beautiful sunset.  The weather was perfect.  It did get a little hot at Lonely Dell Ranch - 95 degrees, but up at Jacob Lake/Grand Canyon it was in the 60's/70's and got very cool at night.  

Saturday morning we had a great breakfast and visited with a lady going to pick up her fiancé from his rim to rim hike after she ate.  He had started at 1:30 at night.  I think that's a sad way to do such a beautiful hike.  He missed so much scenery in the dark.  After breakfast and packing up we got on our way home going via the Kanab/Coral Pine Sand Dunes route.  We got home early afternoon.  It was a great little trip.  Just right for Paul's foot and still a great way to get out and celebrate!