CANMT Trip: The Grand Canyon

 It was lunch time and there wasn't any fast food or restaurants along the road. We ended up getting food at a gas station. In a little over an hour we were at the east entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park. As we entered we were told there was good weather here, but as we got closer to the main Visitors Center by Mather Point, the worse the road conditions would get.
 First we went to Desert View. We stopped at the Visitors Center there, where we picked up Melodie's Jr. Ranger Packet. The ranger told us that one of the requirements was to go to a ranger program. Since we were so late in the day, there weren't very many left. We chose Geo-Glimpse, which was the closest one without having to wait at Desert View for hours (which we probably should have done). But we didn't know just how bad the weather was further west. We knew we would be cutting it close as far as time. We walked to the Grand Canyon passing by the watchtower on the way.

The Grand Canyon was beautiful.

Rocky and Melodie wanted to go up the watchtower. I was still traumatized from Walnut Canyon and wasn't about to do anything that had to do with heights. Some of the fences by the Grand Canyon were bad enough.

I went part of they way up, and this was the view.

 We drove to Yavapai Point and Geology Museum, stopping at a couple of the points/views along the way. If one looked close to the road, we would get out and quickly take a look and take a few pictures.

We didn't get any pictures of me because we were in a hurry, it was so cold it was easier to just keep the camera, and we thought we'd have a lot more time after the ranger program.

 As we were driving, the snow got worse. By the time we got to Yavapai Point we couldn't even see the Grand Canyon. We watched the ranger program, which was very interesting at was even great for Melodie. We learned about DUDE (how the Grand Canyon was formed).

See that big window behind the ranger? That's suppose to be a view of the Grand Canyon. You couldn't see a thing. We kept going outside to check, but it didn't change. We talked with one of the rangers. He asked if we were going to be there tomorrow because tomorrow it wouldn't be snowing. It hadn't been snowing yesterday either. Just the day we were there.
 This is when we were very thankful that we went off-plan and entered the Grand Canyon National Park on the east side. If we hadn't, we wouldn't have seen the Grand Canyon at all. I was a little sad that I didn't get a picture of me in front of the Grand Canyon, but we actually decided that we'll just have to go back. There was so much more to do there than we thought and we have the America the Beautiful annual pass. We're going to try our best to make it back before it expires.
 We still wanted to go to the Mather Point Visitors Center. The weather was terrible by the time we got there. The bathrooms weren't actually in the VC, you had to walk to another building (same to get to the gift shop) and we didn't want to even go outside to walk those short distances (we did though). The wind was so hard that with the snow it was actually hard to keep your eyes open. We loved the new Visitors Center.

I almost had a heart attack watching the movie there. What are those people thinking standing on the edge like that? They must be crazy. (There's a short version of the movie here so you can see what I mean). We also watched Science On a Sphere and Melodie got her ranger badge.

It was dinner time, so we got ready to leave. It took some time to get to the car. First, I wanted a picture of me and anything just to show I had been there.

Then Melodie discovered icicles.

They were just at her level and she loved them. And we still couldn't get her to walk where there wasn't snow.

After finally making it to the car, we drove out of the national park and picked up dinner which we ate on the way to our motel.