February 13, 2005 - Grand Canyon National Park in the Sun.

Monika woke me up with the words, "Clear sky!" I cocked one eye open, looked out the window, and sure enough the heavens were a clear cerulean blue, so I replied (a bit groggily), "Ok, then let's do Plan A!" Plan A was our optimistic plan for taking pictures of the canyon if the weather looked good. We thought we would drive east along the rim road right after dawn to take pictures at each canyon overlook, then have lunch back at the trailer while we downloaded the morning's pictures; and finally spend the afternoon driving west along the rim road out to Hermit's Rest and taking pictures at all the overlooks on that stretch.

So we hustled through a quick breakfast of oatmeal, grabbed the cameras, jumped into the truck, and very cautiously and slowly drove east. I was driving cautiously and slowly because the rain during the night had frozen and black ice was covering much of the road. In fact I had to use 4-wheel drive not to slither around when starting out at stop signs and such, but keeping the speeds way down we slowly worked out way eastward.

If you've ever looked at a map of the Grand Canyon, it runs basically from east to west with a lot of curving around in between. So the morning sun was lighting the canyon from the east, which gave shadows that showed the outlines of the huge formations all across the canyon. We found the observation points had the best panoramic vistas up and down the canyon, but some of the ordinary roadside pull-offs also afforded us great views.

At the east end of the park we stopped at Desert View and climbed an observation tower built with beautiful natural stone. The tower looked old although it actually dated from the 1930s. The architect had carefully styled it after ancestral Puebloan stonework and used hand-fitted weathered stone on the exterior. She had also decorated the interior with copies of authentic native artwork of different kinds. Some folks might think of this as blatantly fake kitsch, but to me it came across as an honest attempt to honor the native cultures as understood at that time.

In any case, the views of the canyon from the top and the viewing gallery outside were absolutely fantastic. The upper end of the canyon seemed to be a darker rock than the vibrant red sandstones of the main section. The formations also appeared somewhat more subdued but it was still a chaotically jumbled landscape. I had to wonder how Colin Fletcher had ever managed to walk the entire length of the canyon traversing all those side canyons, walls, and gorges.

By the end of our eastward swing, my first camera battery was dead and I was almost out of room on the chip, and Monika was in the same situation with her camera. We reversed course and drove back to camp, stopping just long enough to buy some turkey and gravy that we had with our remaining two baked potatoes. I downloaded pictures and cleared the cameras while Monika fixed lunch, and then we sallied forth to try out the western segment of the rim road.

Since we like to walk and Monika's ankle was much improved, we started walking some of the rim trail that parallels the road out to Hermit's Rest. The views were absolutely stunning because you were right on the edge of the canyon most of the time, but that also made it somewhat scary as I am somewhat leery of heights unless I'm flying an airplane. (That might not make sense to non-pilots, but I think most pilots will agree "altitude is your friend" when flying an airplane-it increases your options when things go wrong.)

Again we found that the points along the drive usually offered the better vistas of the canyon, but walking the trail between the points gave us a lot of different looks of the canyon as framed by trees, bushes, and interesting rock formations. The trail did not, of course, have any kind of safety rail and parts of the trail pavement had crumbled off into the canyon, but we stayed on the remaining strip of paved path and had no problem.

When the paved trail turned into an unpaved trail, however, we called it quits partly because Monika's ankle was getting sore and partly because I had some disquieting memories of our first visit to the canyon where I was on the gravel path and at one point it was sloped in such a way that I started to slide off into the canyon. If you have an imagination, the idea of falling off a mile high cliff will make chills run up and down your spine, or at least it did mine, and I had no wish to repeat that experience. Sometimes I think that the major reason I'm alive is that a vivid imagination kept me from many dangerous escapades (e.g. skydiving as a hobby). That said, it could also be a blamed nuisance; when the wind was blowing hard out on those pinnacles of rock, I sometimes thought I felt the rock shifting underneath me and that was unnerving.

Hermit's Rest had the ubiquitous gift shop, but also a huge fireplace with a big stone arch and places to sit. It looked very pleasant but all the seats were taken so we took our pictures of the western end of the canyon and started on our way back. By the late afternoon the sun had melted off all the ice and the driving was a lot easier on that account, but the traffic had also picked up considerably so I had to watch out for that.

The sun was getting low on the horizon as we returned to Bright Angle Lodge and found a parking space. We walked along the rim path down to the trail head that we had walked with our kids so many years ago, but at this time of year the trail was absolutely covered with a solid sheet of ice and slush, so we didn't chance it. The reddish hues in the canyon became ever deeper as the sun set and the shadows crawled across the bottom of the canyon, almost to a point of becoming blood red it was so vivid. But I once again had a camera battery going dead and almost no space left on my chip, so we called it a day and drove back to camp for dinner.

During and after dinner we listened to Prairie Home Companion on the Flagstaff NPR station (sponsored by Northern Arizona University), and it was as good as I had remembered it. I started stitching together some of the many, many panoramic pictures I had taken during the day while Monika was processing and flipping all of our other pictures into the correct orientations. That plus updating the journal brought us right up to 9 o'clock, and we were so tired we just went to bed and turned out the lights.