Once more I was rained out at Antelope valley and the forecast is for a lot more rain. So, I decided to head off for the south rim of the Grand Canyon even though I knew it would be raining there as well.

The south rim is much more developed than the north rim. It's also got a kajillion times more people. At my first stop, desert view there were so many people you practically had to wait in line to get to the edge. An interesting thing though, the viewpoints are literally right on the edge. One little fence between you and a several thousand foot drop.

The weather was looking like it was going to rain any minute so I just went from viewpoint to viewpoint, taking a quick look around. About half-way through it started to rain so I decided to head out. I also decided to head towards New Mexico as well in the hopes that there would be decent weather there. By this time I'd given up on the slot canyons for this trip. On my way out of the park there was a 1/2 mile stretch where it rained so hard that I literally could not see the car in front of me and it was only 20-30 feet in front of me, with it's lights on. It really looked as if my car was under water for a few moments. Cars were just stopping in the middle of the road everywhere around me. I decided to just drive a little bit further the best I could in the hopes that it would let up. Sure enough within 500 feet it turned back into a normal downpour.

On my way out of the park I spotted another Imax theater so I decided to see their Grand Canyon film, figuring that this was probably the most of the canyon I was going to get to see this trip. This film was much better than the last one I saw on Zion. While they did cover the Native American history, they didn't do it in a way as to make it seem cheesy. They also covered quite a lot of the Powell expedition which was interesting. The historic white-water boating scenes were amazing, I don't know how they kept the actors alive. It you're ever in the area, this is well worth seeing. You get to see areas of the canyon that you probably wouldn't otherwise get to see. And you learn a little bit about the history as well.

The mad dash to White Sands

So next I decided to just head for New Mexico. The nearest big town was Flagstaff 100+ miles away and I figured I would just decide where to go from there. Once I got there, my plan was to try and find a way to get weather forecast. It was a big enough town so I hoped that they would have some sort of public internet access somewhere in town.

Well they didn't and by the time I got there everyone I could think to call who had access had already gone home. So I sat in the car using Trip Planner trying to see where I could go given the amount of time I had left. I determined that I could make it all the way to White Sands, 600+ miles away and still have time to make it back before the week ended. So I headed off figuring that it was so far south that the chances of better weather were good.

So several hours later I was in northern New Mexico, east of the Continental Divide in Gallup and it was raining. I was getting worried about White Sands so I got a paper and saw that all of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and northern New Mexico was sacked in. Southern New Mexico looked Ok but there was a large storm to the south and I had no way of telling which way it was headed, although I suspected it was headed north. So, I called a cousin who I knew had Web TV and told her where to go to get a satellite picture. Everything north of me was still raining but White Sands still looked Ok. Since everything north of me was terrible I figured that I didn't have much to lose except sleep by going to white sands.

So I got back in the car and start to head south. Within an hour the sky was clear. I had plans to make it all the way that night (another 450 miles) so I could be there for sunrise, but I just about dropped dead after 300 miles so I parked at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere and went to sleep. I could always be there for sunset. All in all I think I drove something like 650 miles today.