Friday we said goodbye to Utah and headed for the Grand Canyon. Our drive took us through the Painted Desert which was very unimpressive, I expected some colors

For the last half of the drive there were Navaho Indian stands selling jewelry every few hundred yards. None of them can make any money at it. At our lunch stop we bought some roasted piñon nuts from a local. They were sort of smokey and very crunchy, not at all like the pine nuts we buy at the store.

We had some time to kill so we stopped at Wapatki National Monument, another monument I had never heard of. It is an old Indian pueblo which had housed a group of early Indians. As with the other monuments we visited the exhibits and restoration were very well done. I am really starting to appreciate these small out of the way monuments.

We got to the Grand Canyon about 4:30,we thought, set up relaxed a bit and had dinner. We decided to eat a bit early so we could go watch the sunset at 6:15. We set out about 5:45, and hadn't gone far when we realized the sun was way to high to set in half an hour. We found a clock and it was only 5, not 6. We know we didn't cross a time zone so Arizona must not observe Daylight Savings Time. We explored a bit then went out to the rim with hundreds of others to watch the very pretty sunset. Walking back, in the dusk, we walked right up on two elk chomping grass. That was a very pleasant end to our walk.

The weather report for Friday night called for forty degrees. Our propane heat is very noisy so we felt we couldn't use it over night and we have no electric hook up here so we got out every blanket we had. We looked like we were camping in the arctic! Well, I had to throw off almost all my covers when the temperature only dropped to the mid fifties; the weather folks got it wrong again.

Friday we were up and at it early to try and beat the crowds. We did pretty well and spent the morning walking the rim trail and absorbing the stunning views of the canyon. We even got far enough west to see some pieces of the Colorado River far below. We took a few pictures but nothing that captures the grandeur of the place. There were lots of folks walking the trail down into the canyon but we had no inclination whatever to join them, not even for a short ways. We also watched a group of twenty to thirty riding the mules down from the rim.

We quit exploring around lunch time and lazed away the rest of the day at the campsite. We didn't make the same mistake with the blankets as the previous night.

All in all we found the Grand Canyon just as impressive as everyone says. Our one issue is the extreme commercialization of the park. I know they have to serve a huge number of visitors every year but all the services makes the place feel less like a park and more like a private tourist attraction.