Friday - Grandview Lookout Tower and biking

We had wanted to climb Grandview Lookout Tower, but we had talked to some folks back on Monday who had just come down and the lady mentioned that it was really windy at the top... so we waited for a less windy day. Friday was still a bit windy, but better than we've had...

We both started up the tower, but Carl decided it was a bit too steep and took pictures from the ground.

I was at the top (the trap door into the cabin at the top was locked closed) -- you may be able to see me waving just under the structure on top...

Beautiful view

That's the cell tower that was near where we were parked (within a mile) giving us great cellular service here... until Friday morning - we had been on the internet early and all was fine, but about 8am it went down for about 20 minutes -- we guessed that they were rebooting the tower or something.

There is a small house near the base of the Lookout Tower -- maybe someone was stationed here at times in the past, or maybe even at times now if there is a high fire danger.

Coming down

A couple of panorama pictures that I took from the top... picture 1,

... and picture 2.

We had ridden our bikes to the Lookout Tower, and Carl suggested we ride on the trail again. I recommended that we try the Arizona Trail going west, because we had seen where it intersected with the road that we drove on Wednesday and we knew that we could then take that road back around to our campsite. 

Our Fitbits tracked our journey:

The start/finish line (Gracie) is at the checkered flag. We left heading to the right of the flag, and for the first little bit, we were below target heartrate zones... but we quickly entered Fat Burn and Cardio and Peak. The spot on the far right was where the Lookout Tower was located, and then the route on the lower part and to the left of the flag were on our way back.

This view looks at our speed -- green is faster than blue. When we left the Lookout Tower (far right), the part on the Arizona Trail was almost all downhill... so we were going faster. But, we knew we'd be paying the price later when we would have to ride uphill -- that was mostly on the road, but, it was a rough rocky road, so it was tough...

The FitBit data also shows the elevation change that we experienced -- 181 feet is 12-20 stories! Carl's FitBit report indicates that he did 70 feet -- 5-8 stories -- so that's probably more like what we did biking, as my FitBit also considered my Lookout Tower climb.

We are leaving our beautiful spot here in the Kaibab National Forest on Saturday morning, on our way to visit a friend in Kingman, AZ before heading on to Las Vegas for a few days.