Grand Canyon- North Rim- Jacob's Lake

Our super cute cabin 

I was excited about this backpacking trip because I've never been to the North Rim.  From Phoenix,in total, it is a 7 hour drive to the North Rim but through beautiful country.  Up by Cameron the terrain starts to change and you can see pieces of Grand Canyonish landscape starting.  Crossing over the Colorado River, you look down and imagine this brown river cutting the canyon miles away. Then there are the Vermilion cliffs jutting from the ground to the north with all the layers and colors of reds and browns.  The roads from Jacob's Lake to the trail head are covered with Aspens changing colors for fall.

Jacob's Lake is 5 hours from Phoenix and we'd stay there the night before the hike. Despite the town name Jacob's Lake, I never saw a lake but supposedly there is one a mile away.  On the way to our trail head we saw a large puddle and called it Jacob's Lake, but it probably wasn't the lake named by Morman pioneer Jacob Hamblin in 1858.  Jacob's Lake is a very cute but small town, which consists of the Kaibab National Park visitor center, a restaurant where to eat at you have to order entrees and not sandwiches (sandwiches are to eaten at the cafe section a few feet a way from the restaurant), a gift store, a very small grocery section, a gas station and hotel. The hotel, along with regular rooms, has lots of cabins.  Our cabin building actually had two individual units (Room 3 and Room 3A) and while the outside looks itty bitty, the inside room was quite spacious considering.

The cold tile floor and lack of hair dryer scared me away from using the shower but I heard the water was surprisingly hot.  We stayed at the cabin Thursday night, repacked our backpacking gear, loaded up with water and made our way on the forest roads for 1.5 hours to the Bill Hall trail head Friday morning.