Day 1 - Sunday, September 26 - Hermit Creek Camp - 7:18pm

We had a really nice day and seem to have really lucked out with the weather. We picked up food for breakfast when we arrived in Flagstaff yesterday and ended up eating that at one of the picnic tables out near the Hermit trailhead. It was cloudy most of the day with only a few breaks of sun in the early afternoon. Skies started to clear later in the afternoon and there are still some clouds but I can also see some stars. The temperatures were much cooler than expected, probably a high of low to mid 80s at camp in the afternoon. We started out in the upper 40s at the trailhead but it warmed up fast. We had lots of shade for most of the morning.

The trip to camp took much longer than I expected. We started hiking right at 7am, just a little after sunrise, and got to camp around 3pm. Eight hours to cover 8.5 miles. We had several rest breaks along the way including one really long one for lunch at Lookout Point.

There was one major rockfall that messed with the trail and we missed the cairn that marked the correct route through it. We lost several minutes there and luckily did not lose more.

Hermit Camp is nice and we had a good time cooling off at the creek and refilling all of our water containers. It is very pleasant here now and starting to cool down. A very pleasant breeze is blowing as I write this. There are stars out over the north rim but clouds over the south rim.

I had a very nice lunch today: crab meat with mayonnaise and broccoli in a spinach roll-up. Dinner, however, was very unappetizing: Three Sisters Stew from Mountain House. I had to force myself to finish it.

I am really not looking forward to the hike out on the last dy. I know it is going to be very slow and probably take all day.