Grand Canyon 2016

Along the same lines as my post about Seattle, I went to the Grand Canyon for the long weekend in February, to expand the United States travels. Can you believe that I have lived on the WBest Coast my entire life and have never visited Seattle or the Grand Canyon?! Yeah, me either. So, in my effort to visit new places closer to home a friend of mine (also a Grand Canyon Virgin) and I decided to take on the Canyon, and we are both sure glad we did.
As I have mentioned before, I have family that lives in Vegas, so Caitlin and I decided to make Vegas our home base. We flew in on Thursday mid day, picked up our rental car, worked for the rest of the day on Thursday and had dinner with my family. Friday, we woke up, worked for most of the morning and then hit the road. On our way to the Grand Canyon, we stopped and took a tour of the Hoover Dam. The weather was beautiful! 
We made it to the Grand Canyon after dark, dropped off our stuff in our lodge - The Bright Angel Lodge and walked around a bit. It was cold, like, snow was still on the ground. We had eaten a late lunch so we weren't too hungry for dinner so we resorted to wine and cheese that we picked up on our way out of Vegas. 
We woke up early to grab breakfast in our hotel restaurant and get to hiking. We decided that we were going to do the Rim Trail which is pretty basic with a bunch of look outs. We were looking for something semi-easy with great vantage points along the way. We walked along and stopped at almost every overlook. We hiked for maybe about 2 miles then turned around and headed back to the area of the trail where the lodges are and we stopped for a snack and drink at El Tovar. We went back to our lodge for a short nap. 
After our nap we hiked the opposite direction to catch the sunset over the Canyon. We packed our bags with cups and a bottle of wine and set on our way. The sunset was freezing cold, mind blowing and we were a little tipsy. After the sunset, we went back to our lodge for dinner then back to our room for some serious Sisterwives binging. (I am serious you guys, once you start, you can't stop)
On Sunday, we woke up before the sunrise, drove over to the bus station, hopped on a bus to
Yavapai Point to watch the sunrise. Wow. Just wow. Like the sunset, our phones and my fancy schmancy camera did not do it justice. We hung out there for a bit, walked around and hopped back on the bus to head back to El Tovar for breakfast, to pack up our bags and head back to Vegas - today is Valentine's Day.

While we were at the Grand Canyon, my friend Amit had sent me a text asking me about a lounge at the Cosmo that went to when I was there after Christmas was a ton of fun. We realized that we were going to overlap by a day and made plans for the three of us to go to dinner on Valentine's Day. Caitlin and I made it back to Vegas mid afternoon, showered and changed and headed to the strip for our triple VDay date (with, I will say, the worst uber driver on the planet; not an important story).

We had sushi at Shibuya at the MGM Grand and then went over to the Bellagio for a snack and cocktail at Yellowtail. After dinner, we went back to my family's house and drank some wine around the fire pit and played cards. 

On Monday, Caitlin and I treated ourselves to spa treatments: facials, massages and pedicures. It was much needed! 
Loved the Grand Canyon and I would definitely go back and hike down to the bottom...well, let's be honest, ride a mule down :-)