That night, I gathered about 800 throwing size stones in a pile next to the door of the tent. I also found a stick that by all rights could be called a log. I was ready.

Come 3 A.M., right on schedule, the boys were back in town. I decided to turn on some lights, get out of the tent, talk loudly, etc. I kind of left Alicia alone in the tent. She kind of hates me for it. She describes herself as a “morsel” in conversations hence. Anyway, there was no fear on night #2, or any following night. I was convinced that I could make a big enough fuss to keep them at bay. From there on out, the trip was pretty sweet…

… well, until we were at a nature display in Colorado and saw a stuffed 2 yr old female mountain lion that weighed 180 lbs… Those had been back there in the Grand Canyon too. Only the adult males aren’t just 180 lbs. And they aren’t afraid of people. And they are attracted to noise. Oh well, glad I didn’t die.

Oh, and just for kicks, here is a wall I REALLY wanted to climb. It’s not easy to tell the scale, but it’s amazingly tall and awesome.

3:00 A.M.

Alicia (screaming in whispers): Jesse! Jesse! What IS that?! What is that sound?!
Jesse (who had been sleeping): Whahumwhah?
Alicia: Jesse, WAKE UP! What the F@$# is that sound?!

We both listened to what sounded like children giggling. Well, children who had been possessed by Satan, but small demons for sure. There must have been at least 5 different “voices”. I could make them out pretty distinctly, and they were close. It didn’t take us very long to figure out that we were dealing with coyotes. A pack had wandered into our campsite and was raising hell. My instinct was to make a bunch of loud noise. In general, there are very few animals who are attracted to big scary sounds. I had a whistle and a flashlight, but Alicia wouldn’t let me get out of the tent. To her defense, I wasn’t 100% sure they wouldn’t attack me, but I was pretty sure. At one point, I heard what I thought was pawing at the side of the tent, and them some panting. I also heard hooves? I chalked it up to paranoia and delirium. After what seemed like an eternity, it all calmed down. I’m not sure I slept again that night, but I don’t remember much after that until morning.

We talked to other campers the next day, and all the pieces came together. A pack of coyotes did enter the campsite. They were pawing around the tents (I found footprints within inches of my head). Also, they quieted down because a ranger had come through on horseback (hence the hooves) to scare them off.

We wanted a good hike that day. We were tired from being up all night, but wanted to make the most of our time there. We headed down the Bright Angel trail. It’s super steep, and there are resting stations at 1.5 and 3 miles down into the Canyon, and then the next isn’t until like 7 miles (but that’s for people who want to hike down and camp).

We decided to go to the first station at least, and if we had it in us, go to the 3 mile point. The way down was a breeze, so we kept going to the 3 mile stop. Newsflash, hiking downhill is easy. The return… well, not so easy. Picture climbing a set of stairs with legs that are too short as someone shoots you with a jet of boiling water in the face. This is compounded by the fact that horses have used the trail which have left a variety of land mines and frothy pools to avoid stepping in. There is no avoiding the smell, and as you breathe heavily in the hot canyon air, you are suffocated by the smell of rotting organics. Anyway…

At the 1.5 mile station on the way up, there was a park ranger telling people not to continue down past this point. There was a storm coming in and they didn’t want people getting caught in it. I pulled the ranger aside to have a chat with her.

Jesse: So, is it VERY common to have packs of coyotes wandering into your campsite?
Ranger: Pack?! No. They are usually loners, and are pretty skittish. In packs though, they can be like a pack of wolves – pretty brazen.
Jesse: Oh, so what’s the best way to deal with them?
Ranger: Well, this morning at sunrise I was on my bike, and I saw one and started taunting it. You know, like yipping at it and making faces. It started to run at me, but then I just yelled and waved my hands and it got scared and ran away.
Jesse: Soooo, you yell at them?
Ranger: Yeah. Do you have a stick? Get a stick. That should do it. And make a lot of noise. Get some rocks. Ooooh, throw rocks, yeah.

I turned to Alicia and gave her the “I told you so” glance. Indeed, you should get in their face otherwise they’ll take advantage of your hospitality and hang out all night near your tent.

One stop along the way was for some camping in Grand Canyon National Park. Our original idea was to hike down into Havasu Canyon and spend a few days at the falls (look it up, it’s gorgeous). However, the fact that it was monsoon season (deadly flash floods) and a 10 mile hike into the canyon 100+ ºF weather, we decided to camp up on the South rim.

It being our honeymoon, we decided to pick the remotest of camp sites – Desert View. It was a pleasant spot; scraggly brush, warped trees and desert. Exactly what you’d expect the Grand Canyon to be. When we first rolled in, there was a group of ravens the size of midgets who were terrorizing something (or someone?) underneath a picnic table of one of the camp sites. We opted NOT to take that site. We searched around and found one of the most out of the way spots, furthest from the entrance and other folks. We’re not anti-social, but it was our honeymoon, and we wanted to be respectful.

We did some hiking that day and checked out the situation. I had never been to the Grand Canyon before, and when I finally stood in front of it and all its majesty, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, this sure is grand”.

It had been a long day of driving, and we were tired, so we turned in early that night. It was very quiet; very peaceful. I drifted off without a care in the world.

The return journey took probably 1-1.5 hours. Totally brutal. Every steep slope we had climbed on the way up looked entirely more treacherous on the way back down (especially now that if we started slipping, it was a face first dive into DOOM, which is for some reason more scary than rump first, if only because you can see the danger and cannot ignore it).

I’m obviously here to write this story, so we made it back safe and sound. That would be the end of the story in a non-ironic world, but we, at least Alicia and I, do NOT live in that world. When we reached the paved path again (this time it didn’t look so disappointing, even to us naturalists) we gazed upon a sight that we had missed in our eagerness to reach the falls so many hours prior. No more than 30 feet DOWNstream of the waterfall, there was a HUGE gorgeous pool to swim in, which required nothing but a hop over a fallen tree to get to, and provided everything we were looking for. Having just exerted ourselves in the California sun for 2 hours, we jumped in. And let me tell you, I now know joy.

We debated for a bit, and then our better judgment told us to go put on our hiking boots at least. With our proper footwear, we made the best of it, and climbed to the top again, nice and slow. It took us maybe 15-20 minutes to get to the top this time (in my first trip, I did some overly stupid things that I wasn’t willing to risk again). As we proceeded further, we realized that to get down the other side the way we came up, it would take a 5.7 down-climb of a vertical 15-20 foot wall, as well as various sections of gnarly slippery slopes that drop off into 50 foot canyons of doom (NOT an exaggeration). Actual DOOM. Working in tandem, we went ahead and did it, figuring that it wasn’t the right way, but we had come this far, and at least when we got there, the people there could tell us the easy way back. It was an slow descent, and not without a few moments of HOLY S*&#, but we did it.

Finally, we reached the pools!

Now, you would think it was time for celebration and rejoicing, but something was … odd. Everyone there…looked… the same? And, they had … ropes? It was at this very moment that Alicia and I found out what we would come to regret heavily later. The group of 40 individuals who served to bait us up there with the promise of an easy return was not in fact 40 separate individuals who had all made separate decisions to come, but one single family of 40 Vietnamese folk, who had made one decision to come. They had brought a safety rope and had worked as a team to arrive where we were. And indeed, we had come the way they had come. No easy return… AND, the pools where we were standing were pretty small, and to get to the really nice ones, you REALY needed a rope. To add insult to injury, they were in the process of packing up to leave, and taking their rope with them. We could have turned back then. Left with them and used their help to get down, but we’re stubborn and wanted our swim, even in these shallow wading pools.

We spent the next few hours sun bathing and swimming and enjoying the view.

It was very serene, but the dark cloud of the return journey hung over us the entire time. We finally mustered the courage to tackle the trip. I don’t know if you know this, but fear in your heart makes anything and everything more difficult. For example, that 15-20 foot down-climb of 5.7 that we were so ready to do when we thought we wouldn’t have to do it again, was now a 15-20 foot solo of dejection.

I started feeling EXTREMELY guilty for dragging Alicia into this. I mean, I’m a climber, I do this sort of thing, and it was I who went on ahead in the first place and said everything was fine. I was getting freaked, so I couldn’t imagine she was having the time of her life. My hiking boots are NOT climbing shoes (point of fact).

We headed onward! Not five minutes later, we reached a rock wall. It was really a slab wall, with a not terribly intimidating slope – kind of a rocky hill climb. I’d give it a 5.4. It appeared to go on for maybe 40 feet, so I told Alicia I would scamper on ahead and see if it looked like the right way. I spent about 10 minutes scrambling to the top, at which point I had a view down into the other side of the Canyon. Just as promised, there was an idyllic scene of maybe 40 people, young and old, splashing around and frolicking in the cool mountain waters. I came back down and told Alicia that we should go on ahead, with the caveat that I had no idea how to get from the top down to the other side. But, I had seen elderly folks and young children up there, so it couldn’t be THAT hard, right? If so many people had decided to come, it couldn’t be a bad choice.

Our first stop was King’s Canyon National Park. That’s situated right between Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. We chose this locale because Alicia had read about it in the New York Times travel section (her bible). They said that the park has all the natural beauty of the other parks, but about 1/10 the visitors due to the slightly more difficult time getting there. Whoever wrote the column also mentioned a waterfall that you can get to the top of and swim around in some pools formed by the mountain stream. So of course, we wanted in.

It was around day #3 in the park that we decided to check out the falls. We had done a 14 mile hike the day before and we were in the mood for some R&R in a mountain pool. We showed up at Roaring River Falls pretty early in the day. The path to the waterfall is fully paved (kind of a bummer for us naturalists) and we were wearing sandals and our swimsuits (it was a scorcher). The waterfall is really beautiful, but we weren’t interested in sight seeing. We wanted a swim, so we decided to head up to where these pools supposedly were. Immediately upon veering off the beaten path, we were met with a sign that warned us to go no further.

Only slightly less intimidating than the sign we saw when we FIRST arrived in the park…(we saw 2 bears on this trip, it was not an idle warning).

At this point, we figured that the hiking sign was just a formality. Park service Nazi’s, etc. We headed onward!

Alicia and I spent our honeymoon out West. We drove over 2000 miles, hiked over 50 miles and saw no less than 5 states. Along the way there were some interesting adventures. The next few posts will detail these adventures. Enjoy!