Saturday, June 12th Grand Canyon Here We Come! Canyon de Chelly, AZ to Grand Canyon, AZ to Kingman, AZ

Never having been to the Grand Canyon before, I wanted to go (even though it was a little bit out of our way).  Greg had gone as a child and wasn’t particularly interested in returning, but agreed anyway.

We got up very early to see the North Rim of the canyon.  Yesterday we saw the South Rim.  The South Rim offered fewer vista point stops, but as many pueblo village ruin sites.  We took a bunch of pictures and were off before the other tourists had arrived and before the Navajo craft sellers had made it (they stood near the vista points with their craft wares laid out carefully on blankets or in the beds of their trucks.

If I remember correctly, this was dubbed Mummy Rock because bodies were found either in or near the ruins

Closer up view of the pueblo village

The drive from Chinle, AZ to the Grand Canyon was uneventful, 4 or 5 more hours of playing trivia games on Greg’s iphone and discussing our previous adventures.

And then, finally.  We had made it.

To the east gate.  We still had another 20 or 30 miles left until we got to the park area.

Only a couple of miles into this last leg of the journey, it started raining.  Hard.  We were at the “can’t turn back now” stage and it was raining at the Grand Canyon.  We considered finding a place to stay for the night, but anything we could afford was at least an hour away from the Grand Canyon (and we weren’t interested in backtracking).  We had only one afternoon to see the Grand Canyon.

Despite the rain, we saw a good portion of the South Rim.  Essentially, we hopped in and out of the car all afternoon.  Raining and in the low 40s, visibility wasn’t great and comfort was almost nonexistent.

Struggling in the wind and the rain and the cold

We overheard one visitor talking about snow.  Snow!  In Arizona in June!  We had just come from the sunny heat of New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona.  Neither of us were prepared to see snow on the ground; neither of us brought appropriate cold weather clothes.

We stared into the deep foggy canyon and wondered what it might look like if the foggy cloak was lifted.  

The Grand Canyon under a cloak of fog

A bit further along the South Rim

We braved up enough to walk on the path alongside the South Rim.  When we began our 2 mile walk, the weather was cold and rainy.  Near the end of our walk, the clouds left and the sky and canyon both became sunny and bright.  The fog lifted, and it wasn’t quite so cold anymore.

"The sun will come out tomorrow!  Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun!"

3 or 4 shirts, 2 sweaters, and a scarf... after the clouds and rain left and the sun came out to play

Greg looks like he stepped into a postcard

Of course, all of this weather magic happened only shortly before we had to leave.

We had booked a place in Kingman, Arizona, a full 2 hours away from the Grand Canyon.

So at the end of our Canyon walk, we hopped on a shuttle back to the parking lot where we left my car.  And we set off once again, trying to inch a little more to the left on the map.