Sunday was a lovely day – clear blue sky, a few white puffy clouds, very little breeze, and a whole lot warmer! Our plan was to leave Williams and drive back to the South Rim, then take the Desert View drive from the Grand Canyon Village to the East Entrance of the park. There were several overlooks along the way, although truthfully, we skipped a couple of them.
I had more than one moment of fleeting panic when I watched people leave the trails and climb out onto the edge of the rocks in order to have their picture taken on the edge. And Saturday night, just as I would begin to drop off to sleep, I would have this falling sensation and then jerk back awake. That was one of the things I remembered most about our trip to the North Rim in 2002, the ever-present fear that someone of us would slip and fall down the canyon. We spent two nights in a cabin on the edge of one of the side canyons. The wind was ever-present, blowing through the pines. It was lovely and at the same time terrifying. Both nights there, I dreamt of nothing but falling, falling, myself or one of the kids or Bill. Even this trip, as we hiked along the rim, there was one brief moment where my mind thought, “Bill is going to fall!” It’s weird how your mind does that to you and you are suddenly filled with fear and adrenaline. It was a relief to get off the rim hike we were on and back up to the road, away from the edge.