Tuesday October 10, 31.7km/19.7mi

East Rim Overlook (58.1mi/8860ft) to North Rim Campground Jct (77.1/8230ft) (AZ) + 0.7mi to North Rim Campground

I was awake at 6:15am and stumbled over to the viewpoint to watch the sunrise.

Not a bad way to start the day! The view from the East Rim is spectacular and seems rather underrated. We got packed up and started hiking at 6:45 and it was quite cold. I hiked in my hat and puffy coat for about an hour.

We emerged into a sunny valley, and it warmed up a little bit.

After an hour we stopped at a little spring and refilled our bottles, it was still pretty cold so we didn’t stay long. Most of the morning we were hiking thru groves of Aspens with their fall colors.

When I had hiked here in the spring, everything was quite wet, and it was surprising to see how dry it was now.

We crossed a dirt road and then I was walking on trail that I had never seen before, since the Hayduke turned off onto that road. Pretty soon we crossed the boundary into Grand canyon National Park.

Right after that we came upon an old fire tower, which was still open to the public as a viewpoint. So of course I had to go up and explore.

From the top of the tower it looked like autumn in every direction. Yellow Aspens everywhere!

I climbed down the tower and TopShelf went partway up. It was pretty windy there so we hiked a little further down the trail to have lunch at a warmer spot.

We stopped at a Ranger station where they had set out a jug of water for hikers, and enjoyed our lunch at a picnic table. It was a beautiful fall afternoon and the temperatures were a perfect 65F/18C. With only 10 miles to go and a nice easy flat trail, the afternoon cruised by.

Before I knew it, it was 4pm and we were at the North Rim. I filled my water bottle at the famous water fill station, where all the parched rim-to-rim hikers finish their hike.

We took a side trail over to the north rim campground, we saw a massive herd of deer. One of the deer was not afraid at all and seemed to be posing for photos.

We stopped by the general store which was pretty empty of food since they are closing for the season next weekend. But they did have some funny books by Louis Lamour, which reminded me of the CDT.

With such a slim selection of food, the other hikers who were there also bought some really strange items. Like this massive box of frozen fried chicken!

We walked over to the campground and set up our tents, trying to be a little apart from the crowds, like this one group that had set up three tents on one platform.

The North Rim Campground is on a narrow peninsula and it had some really epic views into the Grand canyon.

This might be the best campsite on the entire Arizona Trail! There are so many views in every direction. Tomorrow we plan to wake up early and get started at 6:30 to hike rim-to-rim. It’s a long 22 mile day, descending 6,000 ft and then right back up 5,000 ft.