Day 5-7 Grand Canyon
The morning we left Page for the Grand Canyon the temperature had
dropped. For most of our stay we enjoyed
temps in the 50th and 60’s, but this morning it was about 30 degrees
colder. I had to put on a heavy
sweatshirt and even considered bringing out the winter hat and gloves. We were heading to the Grand Canyon where
they had gotten an inch of snow overnight and the weather report was reporting
temps in the teens. Back at home
they were preparing for blizzard conditions.
Jim, our wilderness guide from White Pocket recommend
we stop at Cameron Trading Post for a Navajo taco. It’s fry bread topped with chili beans, beef,
lettuce, cheddar cheese, tomatoes and green chili salsa. It was excellent and very filling. It was the size of a small pizza and I wasn’t
sure I could finish it but I managed.
We pulled into the park midafternoon. We were staying at one of the lodges in the
park but since we couldn’t check in until 3, we spend the afternoon stopping at
some of the viewpoints along Desert View Drive on the east side of the park. It was cold and windy when we got there and I
had to put on my winter hat and gloves.
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| Desert View Watchtower |
Our first stop was the watchtower. This was a place we enjoyed the last time we
were here and although it was still very much the same it didn’t hold the same
enchantment it had 20 years ago. It seemed
most of the park was like that. The
places we enjoyed last time just didn’t do it for us, and I can’t explain
why. The canyon was still beautiful, but
everything else wasn’t how we remembered it.
I discovered that when you’re walking around with a
SLR camera people assume you know what you’re doing and ask you to take their
picture. I think I took more pics of
strangers than anything else.
The lodges in the park are made up of the main lodge
where you’ll find the registration desk, a gift shop, a cafeteria, and a
tavern. The rooms are made up of little
buildings spread out away from the main lodge.
Each building houses about 15 rooms.
The rooms were simple but functional and really who goes to the Grand
Canyon to sit in their room? When we checked into our room Hubby discovered
we didn’t have Wi-Fi in our room and cell signal was spotty. I saw this as an opportunity to unplug, but
Hubby saw it as an inconvenience, and that started his mood for the night.
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| Grand Canyon at Sunset |
We went for dinner at the lodge tavern. There was a sign that said please wait to be
seated so we waited. And waited. And
waited. The tavern wasn’t that busy and
it appears we were being ignored. Finally,
someone took us to a table, gave us menus and we never saw them again. In the meantime, tables that were seated
after us were getting waited on. This
made Hubby more upset and he flagged down a waitress. She apologized
for the poor service and was very attentive after that. The food wasn’t that great and we decided we
wouldn’t be eating there again. Luckily
there were other choices to eat at in the park.
After the whole dinner fiasco, we went back to our room. To keep the light pollution to a minimum all
the outdoor lights are a very low watt making it difficult to find our building,
much less our room. Already aggravated
about dinner, it didn’t help his mood that the ice machine for our building was
shut off for the winter and was told to fill the ice bucket at a different
building. Hubby came back to the room and
threw the ice bucket on the table. He
was going to try to call the kids to give them a number where they could reach
us, and right then my phone rang; it was our son, James. The connection was bad, and Hubby could hear
James, but he couldn’t hear Hubby. James tried
to call back a couple times and it was the same thing. Finally, when they could hear each other,
Hubby tried to give him the lodge phone number but we couldn’t find anything
with the number on it. At this point,
Hubby grabbed his phone and the ice bucket, jumped in the car to drive back to
the main lodge to call home and fill the bucket up from the cafeteria soda
fountain. Only he couldn’t even get a
signal at the main building. While he
was gone, I found a phone number for the lodge and somehow was able to get
enough signal to be able to txt home.
Hubby came back to the room exasperated and I started to feel bad for
booking us there for 3 nights. I wanted
to be in the park so we could catch a sunrise without having to get up at an ungodly
hour, but because he was mad at just about everything thing I began to wonder
if we would have been better off at one of the hotels just
outside the park.
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| Sunrise over the canyon |
After a good night’s sleep Hubby was in a better mood
and we got up at 5:30 to catch the sunrise at Yavapai Point. When we got there, there were only 2 other people. As it got closer to sunrise more
people started to show up. I staked my
claim on a spot with my tripod and for the most part people respected my space.
After the sun peaked over the horizon I
moved about 6 feet to an area away from the fenced off viewing area and pointed
my camera in the opposite direction to catch the light shining on the canyon monuments. This made some people nervous because I was standing
on top of a cliff with no railing and they were a little vocal about it but I
was still a good 5 feet from the edge and ignored them. I think our experience at Horseshoe Bend had
steeled my nerves a bit.
About an hour or so after sunrise I realized we were
the only ones left. The golden hour was
over and my toes were frozen so it was time to go. We drove up to the watchtower to get some breakfast. The snack bar didn’t open until 9 so we had
to sit outside in the cold for 15 minutes waiting. After breakfast, I decided needed to do
laundry. We were there for the next 2
days and had already seen half the park so I had no problem taking an hour or
so to make sure we had clean clothes for the rest of the trip. Hubby dropped me off at the park laundromat
while he went to look gas so we would have enough to get out to the west end of
the park and back.
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| Somewhere along Hermit Road |
We did find cell signal in the middle of the park at
the visitor’s center. I just happened to
be checking Facebook when I saw a post from our daughter, Alison. She was at an urgent care clinic waiting to
see a doctor because she fell down the stairs the night before. I called her cell and caught her still at the
clinic waiting to hear the results of her x-rays. I told her to txt me when she knew anything,
and I would call her when I could. Later
in the day I got a message from my mom informing me about Alison’s accident and
that they would drive out to our place over the weekend if the kids needed
anything. Later in the day I got another
message saying not to rush home, Alison was in a sling with a hairline fracture
in her elbow but other than that she was fine.
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| Hermits Rest |
We spent most of the rest of the day on Hermit
Road. This side of the park is my
favorite. The views just seem better
from the west side for some reason. I
don’t know how many photos I took but it was a lot as we stopped at each point
working our way to Hermits Rest. Even
though we drove from point to point there was still a lot if walking and
sometimes stairs to climb up and down.
By the end of the day my feet were tired and my knees were weak. We’re not in the shape we were 20 years ago,
and even the small inclines were difficult. After making
it to Hermits Rest we drove back towards the village and stopped at Hopi Point
for sunset. It was probably in the high
teens for temps, with the wind blowing right at us as we stood on the overlook,
and as the sun went down the canyon started to fill with shadows, so we didn’t
stay very long. That night for dinner we got a pizza and took it
back to our room so we could be back before it was to dark.
The next morning, we headed to the village to visit
the gift shops and look for the spot we had our picture taken 20 years ago, to
recreate the photo. We walked up and down the village
looking. Hubby even pulled up the old
pic on his phone trying to match landmarks.
I don’t think we found the exact spot but I think we got close. We wandered around the village for most of
the morning and then went to get lunch outside the park.
Back in the park we visited a few other gift
shops and saw they had Grand Canyon wine.
We
thought about buying a bottle, but wanted to be able to taste it
first and were told we could buy it by the glass in the taverns. We headed back to the tavern we ate at the first
night, only because it was the closest.
I asked about the wine we had seen in the gift shop and the bartender
told me they don’t sell the same wine because the stuff in the gift shops wasn't very good. Instead we tried a wine from the winery we
were planning on going to in Williams. I
was so tired and sore from all the walking we did in the last couple days I
need a nap so we went back to our room and I slept until dinner. By this time we were both done with the canyon, we had seen everything we wanted to see so we had a quick dinner and then went back to the room to watch
tv until bed.
