Jan 31-Feb 1, 2011 Grand Canyon National Park

Depite our efforts to drive south and dodge the cold weather, we met a snow cell in the Grand Canyon. We arrived by noon in GCNP on the South Rim.  Our first stop was at Desert View Point. WOW! The Grand Canyon is GRANDE.  It is the canyon in which all other canyons are measured by. Another uplift of the earth’s layer some million years before, creating this vast, deep canyon. The Colorado River flows in the valley bottom at an elevation of 2, 450 ft. The rim elevations vary from 4000-8000 feet…It’s a massive gorge. It’s hard to really express the expanse of this canyon in pictures or words, you just have to see it to believe it. 
At this DesertView Point, the Watchtower is a cylindrical stone building that was erected in 1930s. A spriral staircase winds up to the top. The inside stone walls are painted with beautiful Hopi Indian drawing and pictures. There are small, medium and large windows framed in around the Watchtower offering different views into the Grand Canyon.  A cool building with good energy within the walls.

We motored along, making our obligatory stops at the posted viewpoints.  Ominous cumulous clouds were looming over the western part of the canyon with intermittent breaks offering partial views into the massive canyon. We decided we would tough it out and camp (without electrical hookup) at Mather’s Campground in the park. One of 5 other campers in the huge CG of 300+ campsites—it was pretty quiet. We decided to take a bike ride along the South Rim of the Canyon and check out sunset.  Great idea.  Now it’s snowing (no accumulation, just dry flurry activity) and very cold. We dress in long johns, several layers, down jackets, hats, scarves, and ski gloves….why are we going for a bike ride?? Because we can!  People were definitely looking at us like we were crazy as we rode up Hermit Road.  We climbed and climbed and climbed some more….the views were outstanding. We’d roll into the viewpoints stopping to take a quick peek (can’t linger or else you’ll get cold)…and kept on riding. We got the highpoint and then started to descend and Sonia turned around---not willing to descend and lose all that elevation and traverse the snow and ice. She turned around and waited for Jason at a sunny location (she did planks to stay warm).  Then we had to hurry back, the sun was getting very low in the sky and it was getting colder---fortunately the ride home was mostly downhill, but that makes the wind chill even colder.

We made a quick stop at the grocery store—bad idea when tired, cold and HUNGRY!  An impulse buy, Entemann’s Raspberry Danish---we ate half of it that night. So good—can’t remember the last time we ate Entemann’s Danish.  We turned on the Little Buddy propane heater and huddled around to thaw out our hands and feet—why did we ride bikes?? Because we can!!We made hot chili and warmed ourselves inside and out. Ahhh…tired, full-belled and relatively warm…brush teeth with nearly ice cold water and go to bed.  Doesn’t this sound enticing? 

In the morning, we had to duke it out for who would turn the heat on. “you do it” “no you do it” “it’s too cold to move”  . We had ice frozen on the inside of the windows…it was probably our coldest night yet, somewhere around 20 degrees.  It was nasty. Every morning, Sonia wakes up with another invention or idea to keep her face warm at night—complaining “my nose is too big, it gets cold too fast!!”

We left in the AM, with the snow flying and zero visibility of the Grand Canyon--good thing we saw it yesterday. We are heading South to Sedona….hoping for warmth and sunshine. We’ll see…



Roadside camp with Lake Powell in the background-night before GCNP