Life is an Adventure: Grand Canyon?

October 5, Tuesday

We woke up today all excited to see the Grand Canyon, there was no rain sounding on our window. Looked out the window, lo & behold it was NOT a sunny day. Rain could be upon us at anytime.
60 degrees, overcast and a little windy. Checked out and headed for the south rim of the canyon.

Hmmmm, I wonder what we will see. The drive up the mountain road did not look inviting:

The clouds had not been this low since we headed west. I wonder if they are IN the canyon?

The drive was gray and misty, our ears were popping, and the clouds were not clearing up.

WE MADE IT!

It was still raining when we made into the park, clouds were hanging out on the road at times. The first visitors center we got to was Desert View. So we pulled in, found a spot to park...and wait for the rain to stop. I was not gonna walk/slide down to the canyon rim in the rain. Considering how graceful I am sometimes, I woulda slid right on by the fence and into the canyon, I did NOT want that close of a look!

So we waited in the truck for a little while, David was tired.......so he napped.

It finally stopped raining, for a little bit, and we headed out to see what there was to see!

The stone watchtower was opened in 1933 as a gift shop and viewing area. Unable to see anything behind it due to whiteout from the clouds. They are doing some repair work to the structure.

The canyon was not in the mood to have visitors. We could see a little and then the clouds would move in, then clear again, then move back to cover. The Colorado river at the bottom was also playing hide and seek. It was beautiful, but "other world" looking.

We stopped by the souvenir shop and snack/diner, had a little bit to eat and spoke with Oscar. He is a tour guide, has been "guiding" 7 years and loves his job. We headed to the restrooms, I went to powder my nose and David got lonely and struck up a conversation with some people who were from Ohio. We discussed how gorgeous it is out west, how much we all were enjoying our trip west, and of course...cars! When the thunder and lightening started and then the rain, we said our good byes and went back to the truck. Unable to see the end of the parking lot, we waited a while until it cleared and then decided to call it a day, our park pass was good for 7 days, so we left and headed towards Las Vegas, baby!

We passed the Sunset Crater Volcano at 7000ft. altitude....couldn't see squat due to the low clouds, rain, and all around yucky weather.

The next day we found out that Arizona, around Flagstaff, where we had driven through late in the afternoon, had tornados! There were 4 tornados which is above the number they have in a year! We were lucky to have been out of the area by then and into Nevada!!

We passed Markum Wash going into a valley, the mountains looked purple in the distance, the sun was shinning around the edges, it was awesome.

We made it to Hoover Dam. The sun was still out, it looked pretty impressive. Homeland security was busy checking vehicles as they crossed the dam. We did get pulled over so they could look into the back of the truck, which does have a hard cover on it. David said he didn't mind, he would rather they payed attention and checked than let just anybody with who knows what in the back of their truck cross. They were really nice, chatted for a few minutes and them on our way. The water level of Lake Mead was pretty low. You can see in the pictures the white is where the water level is normally. Not sure why is is so low.