If you are planning on doing this trip, make sure to book your camping reservation far in advanced. Here is a link that gives you phone numbers and prices. http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/havasupai.htm
I booked our reservation in February, as soon as they began taking reservations for the 2015 year.
We booked 2 nights of camping. It is a 8 mile hike to the reservation, and an extra 2 miles to get to the campground. Here we are at the trailhead all ready to go with our packs!
Some people use the mules to carry their packs down for them, but I would never do this! These poor mules looked BEAT! It made me sad seeing them with those heavy loads.
So speaking of our packs, I wish I had known a couple of things. First, at night, the Grand Canyon gets COLD! Sleeping outside in a tent, the temperature got down to about 27 degrees F. I was shivering all night. All I brought was a pair of yoga pants, a long sleeve t-shirt, and one thin jacket. I ended up wrapping my head in the jacket trying to get warm and sleep. We only had 2 sleeping pads, and 2 thin blankets that we were sharing in our tent. I would recommend buying and bringing a sleeping BAG each. You are going to want your own sleeping bag to keep you warm at night, trust me! I found some lightweight sleeping bags that are good for cold weather at REI for next time :-)
Another thing is that our packs were HEAVY because we thought we had to bring enough water for 3 full days! We would have been good with just bringing 4 water bottles each, maybe a gatorade too for the hike down. Once you reach the village, there are 2 stores that sell cold drinks! They even take credit cards! Also at the campground there is a running water area that you can drink from/ fill up water bottles. We didn't trust this water but everyone else was drinking from it and seemed to be ok. Next time I am not trucking down 12 water bottles for no reason!
The 8 mile hike down to the village wasn't too bad, my feet started hurting and shoulders hurt from the heavy water bottle filled pack, but it took us about 4 hours total. Here are a couple of pictures of us on our trek down, starting to feel the pain :-)
When we finally got to the village, we checked in at the desk, got our camping pass, and continued 2 more miles down to the campground. Here is a picture of the Havasupai Village.
As we were finally getting closer I could hear the waterfall, and soon enough we came around the turn and THERE IT WAS! The bright blue waterfall I saw in the Pinterest picture! Here are my own pictures to prove it!
After taking some selfies, we continued to the campground and found a nice spot to set up our tent. It gets dark in the canyon pretty early so we ended up setting up our tent, eating our colossal protein bars and goldfish crackers for dinner, and then going to sleep around 9.
Here is a picture of the campground area.
The next morning we woke up around 8 and headed to Mooney Falls. After taking a few pictures of that, we headed back to the Havasupai Falls and played in the water for a few hours. The water was cold, but felt refreshing on my sore feet and body! (Not as cold as the Pacific Ocean but close)
After playing in the water all day, we went back to our tent, had our protein bars for dinner again, played some card games, then went to sleep pretty early. The next morning we ate our bagels with peanut butter, took down the tent, and were on our way to hike out! Of course we stopped at the store in the village to grab some cold waters and gatorades for the hike. The 8 mile hike out seemed to go faster than the hike down (maybe we knew what we were in for, and our packs were MUCH lighter.) EXCEPT, the last mile and a half, is the uphill battle! We had to take a few breaks, but we made it! It felt so nice finally getting back to the car and knew we were on our way to go get some burgers and fries!
All in all, this was such a fun trip! I would definitely recommend going here at least once in your life!
