We made it to the Grand Canyon, and it's snowing...

We have made it to Grand Canyon, our ultimate goal. More amazing then I thought. Of course it was not the easiest journey, I could have flown to Flagstaff, rented a car and could have been back two days later. I took the long road, 13 days, flies, spilled wine, torn retina, snow, cold weather, mud, really cold weather, hot weather, rain, more snow, screwy liquor laws, sunburn, but it was worth every minute of the journey. I have seen sights and some of the coolest sunrises and sunsets. I have met some really wonderful people from all over the US and world, most I’ll never see again. I have exhausted my dog almost every single day. I could go home now and would have to say we had a most excellent vacation, but I still have rest of the trip and more stuff to look forward too.

The Grand Canyon from the North Rim

Indie checking out the view from Imperial Point

I arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, 8200 feet, found a camping spot where my front yard is the Grand Canyon, in August I would never even had known this spot existed with all the people. Within minutes of setting up the trailer it starts to snow. Not this wimpy Twin Falls snow, but it was sticking to the ground. We scrambled into the camper and made soup and tea, I covered Indie with a blanket to dry him off and keep him warm, did I mention he is a spoiled dog.

Snow from inside the Bambi

Our front yard, the Grand Canyon!!

It stopped snowing, so we headed to the lodge, which is closed, but has this great viewing deck, and then on to Point Imperial, that was the jackpot, I stood in awe at this view at 8800 feet, it is a 270 degree view that no picture could EVER duplicate. I just stared with my mouth open realizing this is why I traveled.

Everything is now closed at the North Rim except this camp, no water, toilets, anything, but there is plenty of spaces and no lines, my favorite part, but plenty of cold.

We headed back to camp, watched a killer sunset, cooked a ribeye steak and we are now hiding in our camper since it frickin cold outside, I’m guessing mid 20’s tonight, by far my coldest night out. I’m so grateful to have learned about and fixed the battery before tonight, otherwise you would be reading about me in the USA Today, “camper and dog found frozen at Grand Canyon.” We are listening to NPR on my wind-up, solar, battery radio that has weather band, flashlight, and USB charger, and drinking scotch. The radio comes with everything but the scotch, I bought that separate.

I got so excited about the Grand Canyon, I now need to go back and tell you about yesterday in Zion and my travels to GC. So after getting up and checking the National Park campsites I realized I had it pretty good where I was at, so I paid for another night at the same place, Indie was happy because we had direct access to the river, and you all know about him and water. The neighbor girl was happy too, she got to play with Indie another day.

Zion National Park

So we headed out and drove back to the other side of Zion park, it is such a great drive, even better with no trailer. We had all the windows open, including the sun roof, so we had great views. At this time of year the only way you can get into the central section of Zion is via their shuttles, I decided I did not want to sit with 50 others on a shuttle or play the service dog thing so we headed out of the park and found a road that was adjacent to the park. It had a great view of the park and we found a great hunting road that we walked on for about 1.5 hours, we both loved it. We then got to drive back through the park again. I’m sure the central road is amazing, but we were very happy just going back and forth on the main park road, it’s so cool.

Zion -- Checkerboard Mesa

While traveling I have noticed a huge amount of RV rentals, it seems that there are a lot of foreigners, mainly Europeans, that come over and drive around the US and visit the parks in these rental RVs. I’m guessing that the dollar is so low it’s cheap to come to the US. Last night while walking Indie, I met two Aussie couples that were traveling using rental RVs so we chatted about their trip. They were traveling all over the US and Canada and had visited Seattle and went to one of the Seattle Seahawks game, I was explaining some of the rules that are different than Aussie rules football. They are going to Yellowstone next so I gave them some suggestions on best routes depending on the weather. If the weather is good, go through Tetons, if not go through West Yellowstone, the weather is supposed to be good, they were gone early the next morning.

After leaving Zion, about an hour down the road, we came across Colorado City Arizona, for those that don’t know this town it use to be the polygamy capital of the US, reports say that Eldorado, Texas is now is polygamy central, but many polygamist families still reside in Colorado City. The Laura Palmer book, "Escape” is about Carolyn Jessop’s life and escape from this community and the polygamy lifestyle, I was reading it on the Kindle earlier on this trip, thus it raised an interest in this area.

I decided to take a turn into town and drive around a bit. Saw huge houses, not McMansions, just box houses with many rooms, and vans everywhere, the15 passenger vans. All the women I saw had long dresses, white long sleeve tops, and all had that strange looking flip in the front part of their hair. Saw kids everywhere doing work in the yards, seemed strange that none were attending school in the middle of a week day. There were also several larger buildings that were partially complete, but looked to have been sitting for some time. Any time I passed any people they would stop what they were doing and watched me, it was a bit creepie. I decided it was time to leave.

On Wednesday I’m planning on heading lower and to the south of Grand Canyon, after tonight I would like some warm weather again.