Day 7

Well... the storm wasn't all that bad after all. We only really got a total of two inches at most but it snowed pretty much all night and up until we left the park. This morning we got up, and after enjoying the luxury of being able to walk down the street to get a cup of coffee at the general store, we went back over to the rim to check out the canyon again. On the half a mile walk over we noticed that it was getting more and more foggy and when we reached the canyon we looked out to behold (once again!) the magnificent view... only to see white. The only thing that was visible was the canyon wall dropping down into nothingness below us. Undeterred, we decided to go ahead with our plan of continuing yesterday's walk down the rim trail and took the opportunity to go into a bunch of the shops, observatory points, galleries, and the Bright Angel Lodge. We reached the end of the main drag and continued a little ways down the unpaved path that doesn't have rails to block the view and is far less visited. We found a place to sit and were rewarded with a break in the fog which allowed us to get an elusive glimpse into the canyon. We sat until the fog rolled back in again and decided that we'd hit the road again instead of spending more time walking the rim when we'd probably just gotten the best view we'd see.



We headed out with plans for an extremely easy afternoon of driving an estimated 1.5 hours to spend the night in Flagstaff. Arriving there (after driving through another snowstorm and near whiteout conditions) we decided to just get the drive to the Petrified Forest out of the way today so we'd have more time to explore tomorrow. We enjoyed the views a lot along the drive. There were scattered rain and snow showers hovering above the desert while at the same time you could look out and see the sun shining out in patches. The landscape was so flat and the view so unobstructed that we could see for miles and miles and miles (and miles and miles). Along the way we stopped (or maybe attempted to stop) at a couple of roadside attractions/trading posts, but being that it's Sunday most were closed (and really creepy when deserted...) We DID find an awesome place here in the tiny city of Holbrook, Jim Gray's Petrified Wood Co., where we got our first glimpse of the trees that time has turned to stone. Now we're settling into our hotel room for the night anxiously looking forward to what tomorrow will bring, so stay tuned!