And then we saw it, Phantom Ranch, our home and Tecate supplier for the next four days.
The place is perfect. It's absolutely everything that you'd hope a lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon would be. It has the same familiar stone-and-log look as the buildings at the top of the canyon, and it's comprised of a couple dozen small buildings spread out across an area about the size of a football field. Most of the buildings are one bed/one bath cabins that the guests rent, and then the rest are the shower house, cantina, kitchen and other common areas.
In case you're wondering, the rental rates for the cabins are pretty reasonable. They're in the ballpark of $100 for a two-person room, and if you just want a bed in the one of the larger dorm cabins, that'll cost you about $40. It's no Luxury Inn, but it's still a pretty great deal.
However, where they really get you is the food. As you can probably guess, all of the food needs to be carried in by mule. That, coupled with the novelty of a four-course steak dinner at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, brings the dinner cost up to almost $50 a person.
But I digress. First, we needed to unpack. Greg had told us that we'd be staying in the guest loft, which is a much nicer term than "attic next to the swamp cooler".
But when it comes to a free place to stay, this was pretty much as amazing as it gets.
That ladder takes us up into our sleeping area, and the rest of the room is essentially the staff living room. There was a fridge, a couple of couches, and one of the most amazing record collections that I've ever seen.
The front of the staff fridge sums up the place.
It didn't take us long to unpack, since we really didn't need to bring anything. There was no need to bring a tent, food, or even much water. In fact, about half of my pack weight was from the two bottles of liquor that we brought Greg as a thank you gift.
Once we had everything put away in our "loft", we headed over to the staff dining area for dinner. What we saw was one of the biggest surprises of the trip. Frittata. Our dinner was a ham and spinach frittata with a side of crispy kale and yams. At the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I've never eaten so well, even when the food didn't need to brought in by mule.
That would be a running theme down there. The Phantom Ranch staff eat like royalty! Even with the hikes in, out, and around the Grand Canyon, I have no doubt that I put on weight from this trip.
As you might imagine, we didn't last long that evening. We had couple of Tecates on the couch to get caught up with Greg and meet some of the other staffers, and that was about all that we could squeeze out of the day.
Coincidentally, there was a staff meeting planned for that night at 11pm (that's when the last shift of workers are done for the day). Greg apologized in advance for keeping us up, since the meeting was in the living room right below our beds--as if that could have kept us up. And apparently, the meeting was going to get contentious. There was a bit of tension between the stay-up-lates and the early-risers over the amount of evening noise in the living room. But I knew it was going to be alright when I saw the parting note that an outgoing staffer left to the group on his last day (which was apparently the day before we arrived).
We were going to like this place.
