Silja: The Grand Canyon

The past few days seem to have been spent driving – and a lot of that driving was through snow...

We had known for days that a snowstorm was coming, so we planned ahead and make sure to spend the nights as sheltered and low as we could. Unfortunately, visiting a slot canyon makes no sense and is probably not even possible after all this rain and snow, so we decided to cut the fantastic Antelope Canyon in Page from the itinerary. We were just about to cut the Grand Canyon from the list as well, when we learned that roads into Flagstaff were closed after a foot (!) of snow and there was really nowhere to go from Cameron, which is surrounded by the huge Colorado Plateau. We decided to spend the night to see what morning will bring.

We seemed to be the only «white people» around. We were in Navajo Nation and everyone was Native American. However, that fact was hardly reflected or acknowledged in historical accounts. Natives were merely mentioned as ancient history and then Mormon settlers came and the native people never get mentioned from that point forward, neither is any conflict of interests…

  The atmosphere was rather different here. People seemed to be standing around a lot. Service at the post office and the supermarket was slow, which did not feel relaxed but rather depressed. I could not help but frustratedly ask the lady at the visitor's center, who could not answer any of our questions concerning the weather forecast or road conditions, what kind of visitor's center this was and felt bad when she answered that it was a visitor's center for Cameron as a community of native people. Even though we were such irritable tourists, she finally agreed to let us call a line for a road condition report. The man on the other end said he was not a weather man but roads should clear up the next day.

Luckily he was right and we woke up to a clear sky and sunshine! After us girls had had a yoga session at sunrise in the desert plain (and breakfast!) we were heading for the Grand Canyon.

They had cleared the road and it was no problem to drive. The cedars were heavy with snow which was twinkling in the sun and it was so beautiful that we stopped complaining about this NOT being part of our plan at all. Together with surprisingly many other tourists we threw snowballs into the canyon and took pictures of white snow on red sandstone and green agaves covered in ice crystals against blue skies.

On the way out of the national park we stopped in Tusayan to see an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. Even more entertaining than the movie was to watch 3-year-old Lea's face, when staring at the huge screen. After that we drove south until there was no more snow on the ground (which took a while...) Now, a day later, we even made it to a resort with an open pool and the kids can hardly wait till tomorrow morning!