First day off to Roaring Spring

It's now 6am US time...I slept at 7pm and woke up at 5am....wah it was 10 hours...this was first time i had so much sleep in Grand Canyon....think i was over exhausted.

The Roaring Spring hike was very fun but extremely TIRING. Guess wat...i only slept 3 hours and had a bad day the day before due to my work...I was damn tired, frustrated and pissed after i got back from work...already decided not to go for the hike cos i was totally crashed but omehow I changed my mind the next morning....I managed to wake up at 5am (slept at 2am...crazy) and I was fresh and awake....I knew if i din go i would just sit in my room...cursing and swearing!!!!!

Weiming, Manting and I had breakfast at 6.45am and set off at 7.30am. It was drizzling when we were about to set off but we believed that the rain wont last long and decided to go ahead with our plan even though the weather was freezing cold...it was not exactly a bad thing cos the weather in Roaring Spring could be extremely hot and dry during normal days. The whole trip took about 9 hours and we managed to get back by 5pm. We were realatively fast compared to our other frens who went before considering we rested 2 hours at Roaring Spring and we took quite a number of long breaks along the way.

We took a shuttle bus to the starting point of the trail. Thanks to Julia's husband for sending us there....usually they dun send ppl there cos it' beyond their jobscope and hikers gotta take a half-an-hour walk to the starting point.

We arrived at starting point of North Khabaib Trail. It is the longest trail in Grand Canyon North Rim and it links North Rim and South Rim together...It was down slope all the way down the canyon but never dun think down slope is easy...the impact on ur knee joint is so great that we were forced u to walk like an old lady (like how Manting walked..haha) to absorb the impact on both knees...it took us 15min to arrive at our first stop...The Coconino...It has one of the best view of the Canyon for the trail...! Took tonnes of pictures there before we moved on to the next destination.After 30min, we arrived at Supai Tunnel...nothing impressive...just a big hole in a big rock whereby we could walk through it underneath...It is a resting point where there are toilets and water filling points...Before we left, we saw lots of people riding on mules coming..the ride was expensive and not really comfortable cos ur butt will keep banging the back of the mule...it costs USD125 for the whole trip...hmmm we saved USD125!!After resting, we quickly moved on cos we din wanna walk behind the mules cos they would shit along the way...u know wat...mules are so funny...they shit and pee at the same spot as the leader...u will see them walking in single file...stop....shit...and the next mule will go to the same spot to shit....haha....We arrived at the bridge which links one canyon to another in less than one hour....we walked really really fast cos the mules were "chasing" us...Met this interesting Ameicanon the bridge, he was lying down in the middle of the bridge...haha...we left after i took a picture with him...heh!After an hour, we finally arrived at Roaring Spring...Just when we were about to arrive, it started raining again....I quickly took out my waterproof bag and dumped all our cameras inside and ran all the way towards the shelter...Thank god it wasn't heavy downpour!

It is not a huge waterfall...Nothing compared to Niagra Fall or even the water fall in Kota Tinggi....We were damn shag..had some much-needed energy bars outside the restroom...haha...we had no choice...that was the only shelter there...

We stopped there for nearly 2 hours. Lied down on a big rock looking at the sky and the canyon....hmmm....when would be the next time when u look up and there's be a huge rock appear in front of u? maybe not in near future...It's so expensive to come here as a tourist...when u have the time u dun have the money, when u have the money u probably wont have time to do wat u wanna do...
This was not the end of the trip. We still gotta take exactly the same path back to the starting point. Remember it was downslope all the way to Roaring Spring....hehe...Upslope will really kill u man!! Anyway look at the bright side, we dun have to suffer the impact forces on our knees...This time round, the mules were ahead of us and we gotta avoid stepping on the "landmines"...yucks...it stinks! We were exhausted on the way up...Gotta keep talking to each other to keep the morale high and also made us stay awake...Our legs cramped a couple of times along the way...cos we rested too long at some points. Everything was excellent apart from the tiredness.
Finally we reached back Coconino...it was 15min from the starting point...We almost made it! Met this American famiy with their damn cute kids...They are bunch frenly ppl and we had a long chat with them...However it's kinda hard to understand their culture sometimes...the couples already have 2 kids but they adopted another one from Russia(the cute baby in piggy back)...will u do that? I dunno...probably not.....hmmm maybe yes...cos the baby is damn damn cute la...felt like bringing him home man....so cute!!!!!!!!!! U can tell that they are really nice ppl....they were sincere when talking to us and we din talk superficially...Nice to meet these ppl.
After 15min....we finnaly came back to the starting point of the trail....the whole trip took us 9 hours!!!! Damn shag!!! We almost had no more energy to walk back to the lodge which was half an hour away....we decided to try our luck to hitchhike even though we knew that it was no longer a common thing to do in the States...it used to be 20 years back...Thank god we met this guy along the trail....he was loading his into his car at the carpark."U guys wanna have a ride back to the lodge" he asked.

"Sure...thanks so much sir". We were so excited and hop on to his car...WE WERE SO LUCKY!!!

It was a wonderful day cos lots of things happened were my first time...I had my first ever day off after 19 days straight of working and also had first dinner at employee dining room...Today was really a great day...had a great dinner with frens and concussed in my room at 7pm!!! It was a wonderful day!