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Published: October 12th 2008
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Saturday October 11, 2008 Can it get any colder? In Arizona, you say? Still no snow, but this morning, it was frigid and we swore it was well below freezing, with continued ferocious winds all night that wouldn’t quit. We had the heat on all night. Some time during the night, Kayla got up and noticed a bright moon shining through the bathroom vent. How nice, she thought, that we have a clear vent cover to see the sky. Also during the night, Richard got up and noticed the stars through the same vent. But he also noticed how unusually cold the bathroom was. Morning light brought the grim reality that we had indeed sustained damage during the windstorm that almost blew us off the road on the drive yesterday, and the bathroom vent was now open air, with the cover somewhere in the desert on Navajo land, blown well into the hereafter.
Given the weather, frigid and dropping temperatures, very real possibility of snow, and the certainty of rain on the way back north, and given that we were in the middle of nowhere when it came to finding an RV repair business, or one that could supply
the missing part on a Canadian-made RV, it was Keltie to the rescue (aka McGyver trainees). Richard dug through his bag of tools and repair kit to unearth an old roll of duct tape. Kayla offered her ancient never used emergency space blanket from her hiking pack, along with lots of encouragement to be creative. Richard climbed up on the camper roof and voila - new cover for the bathroom vent, although definitely not as esthetically pleasing as the ‘clear’ one. Time will tell if the temporary/permanent vent cover is water proof and highway speed resistant. Apple pancakes for breakfast after that feat, to fortify us for the day ahead braving the elements.
Having dealt with that emergency, we set out with just about every layer of clothing we owned, gloves, toques, and heavy duty Gortex jackets, hopped the free blue shuttle bus, transferred to the green shuttle bus, and set out to see as many viewpoints as we could, and to walk some of the Rim Trail. It was a sunny day, but the winds had not abated, and continued as ferocious as ever, with ever-dropping temperatures throughout the day. We did return to the campground office at
one point to find that the forecast was for even colder weather tonight, somewhere well below freezing (15 F, whatever that is), and an even greater chance of the snow that had not yet materialized, even though by the end of the day the clouds were indeed moving in.
So, although we had planned on hiking down into the canyon part way on the South Kaibab Trail tomorrow, we decided it was just too bloody cold to stay, and a more ‘in-depth acquaintance’ with the Grand Canyon would have to wait for another day. We are off tomorrow for warmer climes, although likely in a northerly direction, and not further south. Maybe 100 F in Phoenix would have not been so bad after all, but that too will have to wait for another time. We certainly have experienced some extremes on this trip.
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