WEDNESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2024

(Grand Canyon, AZ)

I woke up before Andrew again, and sneaked out of bed to open the curtain. I loved the sight of a light dusting off snow in the ground, anywhere the sun wasn’t getting to. According to the app, it was currently -5C. I got back in bed.

After a while, I made coffee, put on a lot of clothes, and stood outside on the balcony, making the most of the moment to enjoy my coffee in the canyon. We went to breakfast, and then came back and got ready for the day and watched the train again. We decided not to go down into the canyon, but instead to have a gentle day, soaking in the peace and tranquility that the canyon offers. We started by walking to the rim and then walked up past the Bright Angel Lodge and the El Tovar Hotel. 

We continued along part of the ‘trail of time’, where different rocks are displayed corresponding to different years in the canyon’s history. The dark, marbled gneiss ‘basement’ rocks that form the steep walls of the inner canyon were formed from magma 1,840 million years ago.

After a while we turned off the rim trail and took a route through the woods towards Shrine of the Ages and the market plaza. There were more patches of snow, and occasional ice, and a lovely smell of vanilla and pine trees as we wandered through the woods. And no people. At all. A woodpecker was heard but not seen. Other little birds flitted about. It was all very tranquil.

We had a brief browse in the general store, a sip of tea, and then meandered a further mile through the woods, up to the visitor centre, where we had hot chocolate (it was still only around 2 degrees), and I may have had a chocolate muffin as well. There were a lot of sparrows, fluffing themselves up against the cold, and eating seeds from the plants around the area. The route passed an area of construction, largely screened by trees. I’m not sure if this is also to do with water supply, or something else.

We took the bus back from the visitor centre to the train depot in the village, and then walked from there back to the room. Along the way we stopped and looked at the train station, built in 1910, encountered an elk crossing the road (it was headed for the mule buildings to help itself to some left over food), and walked alongside the mule barns. 

After drinking tea, eating crisps, and a little R&R, it was time to head out again to the rim for possible sunset photos. There were plenty of clouds around, so it wasn’t obvious if it would be a good sunset. Fair to say, though, it was. I may have taken a photo…or two…or… Well, you get the idea. It was though, still absolutely freezing (quite literally, there was ice on the path where water had frozen), and the wind was ‘brisk’, so we headed straight for dinner at the main lodge building. 

I was delighted to see another elk in the woods on the way to dinner. We have usually seen both elk and deer at Grand Canyon, but apart from the deer on the way in, we hadn’t seen any, so I was very happy that they are still grazing around and about. We were ahead of the rush for dinner, but it filled up soon after we were eating. We’re headed off back to our room in the dark, with just our head torches lighting the way. Then, right outside our lodge building we heard rustling and spotted a deer grazing. Then we spotted more. There were four deer in total. We watched for a few minutes and then went up to our room and watched a bit longer from our balcony. Such a lovely thing to see.

After that, I decided that it might be a good night for star photography but, at sub zero temperatures, I thought I’d let the camera do the cold work on our balcony, which had the benefit of being north facing, while I sat in bed watching a movie with Andrew (that he had previously downloaded to his iPad, an excellent bit of pre-planning given the state of tv reception here).

After a first half hour stint the cloud moved in, but it was forecast to clear later. So at around 9pm I set things up for a second shot, this time an hour long. And here are the results. That’s largely it from Grand Canyon this year, as tomorrow we move on again.