Day 4

Day 4

Today we woke up around 6:00, quickly packed up the car and had a continental breakfast at our lodge. It is pretty chilly, so I had oatmeal for breakfast! Some parts of Utah had snow showers overnight! Today is a travel day as we have a five hour drive to get to the Grand Canyon. We made two cool stops along the way. First, we went to this roadside tourist attraction/cave. It is a natural cave that kids in the 1930's used to party in, and in the 50's this guy named Chamberlain took it over, gave it a fresh coat of paint, and turned it into a bar. The barstools are made from redwood tree trunks. There were two bigs "rooms" in this cave, & the bigger one used to have a dance band on weekends! I think they played rock music. (Get it - cause it's a cave, in the rock! Ha Ha!) Today, it is a museum/gift shop run by his family. Chamberlain was an interesting guy - played pro football for Pittsburgh in the 40's & later had bit parts in a bunch of westerns. After that, we went to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. It took us out of our way by an hour, but it was worth it. Beautiful, orange sand dunes. Lot of neat colorful, flowers, and interesting animal tracks. Along the way, we also found a Walmart, which I was pretty excited about. We loaded up on "supplies" for hiking, etc. We are back on Vegas time, so we are not sure how long of a trip it was. Very excited to enter the Grand Canyon Park! Stopped at the first pull out. Amazing, of course! Next we went to this old, very tall tower on the ridge and climbed to the top. Spectacular view of the canyon. An even better view is from our hotel, The El Tovar. An old hotel, lodge type feel to it. The kind with cool log beams and animal heads hanging on the walls. There is an over priced gift shop and an even more over priced restaurant that we will not be dining at! Rather, we will have chips and salsa on the wrap around porch tomorrow to save a few dollars for dinner! Our room is a bit small and skrunchie, and of course, since there is no elevator, we happen to be on the third floor! But hey, we will deal! We are literally right on the rim of the southern part of the park. We can see the canyon from our room, and it is amazing, of course. Beyond words. The colors and the layers of colors, and the depth of the canyon make you feel like you are a speck of dust in the geological time line of our earth. The theme of the day has been brrrr!!!! Cold!!!! Hard to warm up despite my layers. We watched the sunset through the clouds from the porch as it was too cold to stand at the rim. Bedtime at 8:30 and an early morning to set out on two hikes and unknown adventures!