Flagstaff to Grand Canyon Village: Walking meditation

Sorry, leider gibt’s diesen Blog Eintrag nur in English. Danke für dein Verständnis.

Yes, you did read it right, Grand Canyon Village. That’s where the Arizona Trail leads to and not only to but also through the Grand Canyon whouhou. Just ~100 Miles north of Flagstaff the ground all of a sudden drops about 5000 feet the before rushing Colorado River.

On Monday we ate breakfast at the trail angel house we stayed at and I can tell you it’s so easy to get sucked in here for a few days. The food was just too good to leave behind and the dogs too cute to stop playing and cuddling with, the trail angels were way too nice to believe it and Flagstaff itself is pretty cool. Long story short, we decided to stay just one more night. We had to send resupply boxes for the sections ahead so we’d only get a pretty late start that day anyway.

Once at the post office checking for addresses to send packages to (we took it a bit easy this time) we realized there was only one option: General Delivery to the post office in Grand Canyon Village (103 Miles away at that point). This basically means we are bound to the opening hours of the post office, so Friday 4:30 pm. Either we would have to hike the 103 miles from Tuesday to Friday afternoon or we’d have to wait out the weekend to get our boxes. Puuh!

So our goal was set: hike all the way to Grand Canyon Village post office by Friday. Just a heads up, I am not a super-purist, I sometimes take side-trails. Still, basically we hiked 25, 28, 29 miles a day. The last day we cut out the way to Tusayan and hiked from the Grandview Lookout Trailhead along the Grand Canyon Rim to the Village. It was awesome as I’ve never seen such a thing before and now got to drink my morning coffee on the edge of this unbelievable huge and crazy thing. More about that will follow.

Well walking nearly 30 miles a day was not to say easy out of Flagstaff as the trail followed flat dirt roads for a big portion of this section. Isn’t that boring you might be thinking, walking for about 10 hours straight? This, of course, is different from person to person, I personally enjoy the time by letting my mind wander around, having no specific topic to think about or problem to solve, just follow the thoughts as they pop up…Like walking meditation.

Whenever I do get fed up with my own mind I use podcasts and music to keep me occupied. And sure we do talk as well with each other.

My favorite podcasts so far:

• Fest und flauschig (German/satire, comedy) – http://www.fidi-bumsi.xyz/rss.xml
• Lage der Nation (German / international political news sum-up) – https://www.kuechenstud.io/lagedernation/feed/mp3/
• The Trail Show (American / trails, beer, comedy) – http://thetrailshow.com/?feed=podcast

Any podcasts you like a lot or hiking related podcasts which would be interesting to know about? Leave me a comment!