The plan today is to visit Antelope Canyon, however I did not make reservations ahead of time because you really need sunlight to see the beauty in the Canyon. I did not realize that sunshine is not an issue for this area, it's a desert and it hardly rains. The forecast daily is sunny, hot and dry. However, with a Tropical Storm/borderline hurricane in the west coast near California the area has been getting passing thunderstorms 3 to 4 times per day in the past couple of days and more are predicted today.

Peak times for the visit to the canyon are in the morning, The clouds are out and the weather forecast is predicting a passing storm this morning, but the forecast is also calling for some periods of sunshine later. We decided to take our chances and call the tour companies and book it. Most were booked for the morning and we made reservations for the 3PM tour hoping to catch a break.

We headed out on the handy dandy resort shuttle to catch the 11AM town shuttle at the resort hotel. I thought we would have to get off at Wal-Mart and then get a cab to the tour company offices, however our really nice shuttle driver informed us that the Safeway stop would be closer and within walking distance to tour companies and restaurants. We got off at Safeway and before long realized we were practically across the street from where we needed to be. Since we thought it was going to take us more time to get here, we had brunch at the RV, now with time to spare, we walked around for a bit cheking out the area. Gil Sr of cource went on a hunt for lottery tickets and we stopped at a ice cream shop for a tasty snack before heading to the office to check in.

So far the passing thunderstorms have not been a big issue. It rains really hard for a short time and the sun comes back out. The problem in this area is since it is the desert, the water does not get absorbed by the ground, it all rolls downhill through canyons into the lake. Due to this there is danger of flash flooding in the area.

As we were standing in line to check in for the tour we learned it was cancelled due to danger of flash floods in the Canyon. Even though it was not raining where we were, water from rain in the higher grounds will flow into it and could quickly rise up to 12 feet levels and with great force. A few years ago there were casualties there and since then Canyon gets closed.

Standing there in disappointment we quickly decided we would book the tour for tomorrow and extend our stay one more night. This meant we would skip our visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but we were all OK with this since we were going to visit it from the South in about a week.

The weather is predicting sunny skies from here on out, so it should be perfect to do the tour tomorrow.