Arizona surprises

Today was full of surprises. When closing yesterday, we were in Page, AZ - fully intending to be camping in the Grand Canyon National Park tonight. Despite those wonderful plans, I am writing this post on C's laptop in a motel in Williams, AZ. We are staying virtually on Route 66, but that's hardly the point. Let's recap.

First of all, we wanted to see Antelope Canyon near Page and had intentionally skipped checking out the Glen Canyon Dam that is responsible for Lake Powell. Somehow we ended up getting a little lost and driving to the dam anyway before heading for Antelope Canyon. Here we were informed that the Navajo tribe charges $25 a head for a 2-mile-guided tour to a crowded slot canyon which was supposed to only take 20 minutes to wlk through, if you manage to skirt the photographing tourists. Sorry, not interested.

Instead we drove down to the edge of the Grand Canyon National Park, visiting the Vermillion Cliffs and Lees Ferry - for a long time this was the only place to get across the Colorado River for some 600 miles. In a surprise move, we then hiked Cathedral Wash, a beautiful and empty two-hour-canyon hike just off the road to Lees Ferry. It was not on any of our maps or in the rough guide, but if you happen to come down that way, definitely check it out! Here we are at the end of the canyon, at the edge of the Colorado river:

and here is a typical image of the way through the canyon itself.

Finally back on the main road, we discovered that the northern entrance to the Grand Canyon National park was closed due to snow. Hrmpf. Driving into Flagstaff a little while later, we were in a snowstorm ourselves... And there I thought Arizona was a desert where one was supposed to be pretty much immune to adverse precipitation :S ... Anyway, long story short, the train from Williams to Grand Canyon Village is $83 a head and only leaves a few hours in the park, so we have no idea whether we will make it up there by car tomorrow** or just head back toward Las Vegas and some other adventures to follow elsewhere.

** Today one was recommended to have either four-wheel drive and/or snow chains, neither one of which is present on our rental car. In fact, I am pretty sure we have summer tires on top of all that.