Tuesday 20th September

We are so lucky! We had hot sun yesterday for our canyon trip and today was cloudy and heavy rain We had a leisurely start and drove to various viewponts where, despite the rain, we had some lovely atmospheric scenes of the clouds drifting and hanging in the Canyon.

We had been out about an hour and had just visited Grand Point View when we realised we still had our room key, so it was about turn and drive back to Tusayan again! We drove out again and although it is only 12 miles across the Canyon to North Rim Lodge it is a drive of 216  miles and takes 4.5hours. With several stops along the way we reached Cameron trading Post shortly after 2pm for a late lunch (we were only able to book dinner tonight for 8.30pm so a late lunch was what we were aiming for). I had a Navajo Taco which consisted of a delicious puffed (?fried) bread topped with mince, beans, salad, chillies and cheese… yummy!

We were lucky again to find the rain had stopped so that we could wander out to the viewpoint over Little Colorado River Canyon

 and also when we reached the Navajo Bridge over the Grand Canyon. 

Having passed several elk and moose along the way, we arrived in fog and darkness at the North Rim and had great difficulty finding where to go to park and register at reception for the North Rim Lodge. It has 200 rooms scattered over a very large area and no signs telling you where to park or where to go! Anyway we eventually made it to our room which is about as far from reception and the dining room as you can get, but we did manage to find one space in the nearest car park!

Dinner was excellent, however, and so was the bottle of wine!!