I thought I would title my post with this for two reasons. One, we just witnessed Rob Cross winning the Dutch Darts Masters (and this is a well known darts chant and he’s our favourite player), and two, because when we awoke on our travel day to the Grand Canyon it was snowing. The latter was a complete surprise because it was not forecast at all.

We decided to get on the road early in case the snow got any worse. The route from Glen Canyon to Grand Canyon was only supposed to take 2 hours, but one of the roads we had to take from Cameron you can see on the map was closed due to the snow so we had to take a detour, which added 1.5 hours to the journey.

When we eventually arrived we found even more snow. We did a walk along the canyon rim and you couldn’t even see the canyon. In certain spots, you could barely tell how near you were to the edge let alone have a view into the canyon.

Unlike the previous parks we’d visited this one had a whole village inside, including lodgings, restaurants, gift shops, museums, art exhibits etc, with a free shuttle bus service that takes you all over. You can tell it’s a popular tourist destination as there is a lot going on.

We are staying in one of the lodges on the South Rim side – the North Rim part of the canyon is closed this time of year. It makes a nice change to be staying in the park itself as we won’t need to use the car again for a few days and everything is within walking/shuttle range. A few of the hiking trails actually start quite near our hotel too which is even more handy. We even have a balcony which would be great in the summer – not so great in these conditions!

First full day in Grand Canyon

We were pleased to see that it had stopped snowing the next morning, and more importantly we could actually see the canyon. I am not sure these photographs do the park justice but again there were incredible views all around.

There were a few hikes we wanted to do during our time here, two that zig-zagged down into the canyon (not all the way to the bottom as it is too far to do that in one day as it would require an overnight camping trip before trekking back up) and one that was a further portion of the rim trail. We opted to do the rim trail as we thought going up and down steep terrain maybe a bit dangerous underfoot – so we thought we’d give those routes an extra day to thaw out!

We basically walked 5 miles around the rim, and then back again, so we definitely put the miles in today around 10 miles total.

We even saw lots of deer too. This wasn’t surprising as throughout the walk there were a lot of animal footprints so we knew they had to be around somewhere.

That’s it for now and need to rest up ahead of tomorrow when we plan on tackling the Bright Angel Trailhead which is one of the routes down into the canyon. It’s 9.5 miles to the bottom but there are various rest stops along the way so I am not sure how far we will go before turning back…so watch this space!

Lucy