After a rough weather day of being pummeled by sleet, buffeting wind, and massive tumbleweeds that we thought would eat our rig, we reached the Grand Canyon Trailer Village worrying about our pipes freezing as the snow began to fall.  We hooked up the utility lamp to heat up the fresh water tank area and stuffed towels in the bay.  We ran the taps in the middle of the night – so far so good.  By morning we awoke to a carpet of snow and for a moment our worries were swept away by the crystal reflections that accompanied the melt as the sun shot through the blue sky.  

The park does a great job with the shuttle service and we walked from our site to the bus stop arriving at Mather Point within a few minutes.  My mind and heart are simply not big enough to embrace this epic visage of a place.  It stuns you into submission at every turn. The cold and the infinite landscape dissipated the usual burn of a long walk. 

The trees were covered with a dusting of snow and you would see on occasion an old and twisted juniper standing guard; a rebel against the elements.  

The conditions were slushy with a dash of ice and if you weren’t careful you could have a nasty spill.  I’m surprised more people don’t actually plummet to their deaths with their cavalier selfies at the cliff’s edge. We stuck with safer options.

Sadly, our dear companion Dave-the-Minion did a runner on the trail.  We tried to find him but came up empty handed with no response from lost and found yet.  We can only hope he has been retrieved by a loving family.  We’ve had him for years and he has been with us on so many journeys.  I hope he didn’t take offense to no longer being the “only one” since we brought baby Yoda (Grogu) into the fold.  

Cold, tired and equally exhilarated, we had a nice late lunch at the El Tovar Lodge dining room, I had a Navajo Taco which was really satisfying with Indian bread as a base. We picked up a few souvenirs along the way including a book on Navajo rugs as I want to understand the underlying meaning of the designs.  

I managed to squeeze in a few pictures on my dad’s 1977 Pentax; I will be taking BW 35mm Ilford film images as we move around the national parks; I hope to capture those places he never got a chance to get to.  It will be exciting to see the end result! 

We woke up to freezing temps with worse weather on the way.  We decided to go to Yaki point which was spectacular with the new snow and the shifting cotton ball clouds, but we could see the weather system coming in and got caught in it on our way to the visitor center from the Pipe Creek Vista.  It was horizontal snow pelting us as we made our way back to Big B.  We decided the weather was too harsh and socked in to enjoy the rest of our stay so packed up and meandered are way carefully through the park roads.

We left by way of Williams and Flagstaff and drove in blizzard-like conditions along Route 66 until we turned off to Page.  The weather finally broke and ice started peeling off the rig.  The landscape along the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument made for an eye-popping end of the day.  The sky was clear and we thawed out at the Lake Powell Campground – winding down with a classic southwest sunset. Tomorrow will be a rest day and a chance to give the rig a desperately needed clean.