Here's about half the outdoor market. They were selling Fry Bread at two places and burning a nice sage too. I half wanted to buy some fry bread, but we had very little cash on us, and it was windy and cold, so we took off, toward the Grand Canyon.

I have never been to the Grand Canyon before, and it has always been something I have wanted to do. So when Mark was thinking about cutting south and missing it to save some time, I vetoed him (he was fine with that). So we roll into the Grand Canyon National Park rather late in the afternoon (4:00, which is an hour before sundown these days), and Mark says, "look, you can see it now," I was so excited. I called Katie onto my lap to look and see. She looked, said, "yeah" and promptly fell asleep (so much for her interest). Well, I'm glad she and I got that one view of it (I got two or three more after she fell asleep), because about 10 seconds after we registered at the Trailer Campground here in the park, it started snowing, and by nightfall it was snowing hard. And it snowed all day today (Sunday). Absolutely no views of the canyon. No pictures did we take yesterday (oh they'll be plenty of time for that tomorrow). It's supposed to snow all day tomorrow too, but should clear up for Tuesday, the morning we have to leave. Maybe we will get a few pictures before we have to check out.

Despite the lack of views (I know they're supposed to be incredible) we've been able to see all the gift shops and the visitor's center and the evening programs (Mark and Katie are at tonight's right now). The one last night was great. It was on the geology of the canyon (the bottom of the canyon, where the walls are steep at the river gorge, is so old it is actually the continent itself. It's 1.7 billion years old, the age of the continental shelf, so the real age of America, in a way. I really want to look down and see it myself (I'm not hiking down there). Mark might hike partway down there tomorrow if the weather suddenly clears. Anyway, another interesting part of the talk was that we heard that there is a release up at Glen Canyon Dam (100 miles away), that was scheduled for 1am this morning (Saturday morning). I assume it happened. So that means that about 20 hours later (in about an hour from now), that flash flood will hit the Grand Canyon, increasing the volume of the Colorado River 5 times. It's supposed to deposit some sand on the river beaches here, and should be totally unapparent to anyone from the rim (even if it were light outside and not snowing). Here are the pictures we took so far:

It first started snowing at about 4:45pm

Five minutes later, it was snowing this hard

The view when we woke up

our little spot at the campground this morning

our snowperson

a pretty tree in our campground

our view of the grand canyon today

Just around 3pm, the clouds lifted enough to see this much. It's the most we've seen today.

I took a tour of the 100-year old Kolb Photography studio/home. It's a very cool tour--if you come here and they still are running it, take it.

Mark hiked down the canyon partway to the bottom, and here are some pictures he took:

Katie still has a cough; it just won't go away. It's been over a month now, and even though she has no sore throat or fever, I've decided to take her to a clinic, maybe tomorrow. There's one here in the park. Then, on Tuesday, we're off to the south, to the old Route 66 (now 40).

Took Katie to the clinic at the canyon. The Russian doctor saw us for free (it was supposed to be $150) and said that Katie should probably get a chest xray ($200) that would be looked at by a radiologist ($150+). Then she said Katie would need antibiotics. I wondered to myself if she couldn't just prescribe the antibiotics. We'll wait and see if our insurance will be accepted in Flagstaff or Albuquerque.

Tuesday: finally the snow stopped and the sky cleared!!!!!


a hastily-put together panorama shot.