What was I thinking?

It went like this......we had a saintly friend lined up to watch the kids and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to hike down to Phantom Ranch (bottom of the Grand Canyon) with Matt on a work assignment before we head back to Kansas.....there was no way a little cold was going to stop me.

You can see pieces of the trail in the pic below, the hike is 9.6 miles of switch backs and basically straight down to the Colorado River.....amazingly beautiful! But all my positive thinking and Cold-eze was not deflecting this cold and it just go worse and worse with every step. When we got to our cabin I melted into my green bunk bed and fell fast asleep.....waking up about 30 minutes later with chills that only a fever can bring.......ugh!

After my nap, I did enjoy a nice dinner with Matt and we watched the sunset against the canyon walls ~ spectacular!
Then the next day it was straight back up 9.6 miles with sore muscles and my cold that had moved into my chest and I was coughing up all kinds of crud and could hardly breathe.

This picture cracks me up, because I look horrible.....but as terrible as I look, I felt so much worse! This is the only picture of us on the trip and it's at the mile 3 marker.....three miles to go, the steepest, meanest three miles of the stinkin' day!

When we hit the 1.5 mile marker I could see the fear in Matt's face, he wasn't sure I was going to make it out by myself and I was starting to wonder if I was going to be in that famous book of those who died in the Grand Canyon. I made it to the top, I didn't set any records.......although I did contemplate hijacking one of those mules :) When I got home my fever was 101.8, what was I thinking?