It is still raining and icy cold. I have a huge hankering for pancakes and I need to restock my food pannier. Tusayan is big enough to fulfill both these needs and, on arrival, I head straight for the first café that I see to order a stack of pancakes. With wi-fi an added café bonus, I check the weather and discover that snow and night time temperatures of -9 to -12 Celsius are predicted over the next five days. I linger in the café for as long as I can and then move on to the general store.

The produce is limited and overpriced but I grab what I can. I have spread my purchases out on the ground to organise and pack them into my pannier when a girl passes by.

“Are you camping out in this weather?” she asks.

“Yes!” I reply.

“You can come and stay at my house,” she offers.

I look up from my packaging.

“I’ve got the day off and I’ve rented some videos – I’m going to spend the afternoon watching them. It’s 67 degrees (around 20 degrees Celsius) at home.”

I’m almost sold.

“We call it Casa de Cougar. It’s a trailer in the RV park – we all work as trail guides. Just turn right up there. You can’t miss it – it’s at the end of the road and ours is the only one with bikes.”

How can I refuse? I tell her I’ll be there as soon as I’m organised; a warm comfy house, within striking distance of the Grand Canyon, filled with people with an intimate knowledge of it seems like a stroke of good fortune that would be extremely foolish to refuse.

I soon join Jess on the couch and spend the afternoon watching videos. As dusk draws in Jess suddenly exclaims, “Have you seen the Canyon yet?”

I admit that I haven’t.

“Well, let’s go and see the sunset then!”

We jump in the car and effortlessly drive the seven miles to the edge of the Canyon. It is cold enough that there are only half a dozen people to be seen on one of the most visited points on the South Rim. I have forgotten my camera and so I watch the sun set without distraction.

My second glimpse of the Grand Canyon - the following morning.

We shop for food at the Grand Canyon Village store and head home to make dinner. Tank, another member of the household, arrives and we eat, drink and talk. Tank has maps and advice about day walks and I resolve to get up early and explore.

In the morning, as snow drifts gently down, I set off on my bike to ride fourteen miles to Hermit’s Rest at the west end of the South Rim for a eight mile return hike to Yuma Point.

A dusting of snow in forest on the way into the Grand Canyon National Park.

The road to Hermit’s Rest hugs the rim of the Canyon and I stop constantly to admire the views.

Grand Canyon views.

The wind is icy and I am glad to descend into the Canyon where it is sheltered and the temperatures are warmer. I met a few weary people on the Hermit Trail, making the ascent, but once I turn onto the Yuma Point there is not another soul to be seen all day.

Heading down into the Canyon.

It's big!

Walking in the Canyon is strenuous but very worthwhile.

I was particularly taken by these plants...

...from all angles.

Loads to see on a small, as well as grand, scale...

Lichen in every colour.

The Canyon is mesmerising and I walk further and further, glancing from time to time at my watch to check I have enough time to make the ascent before dark but pushing back my deadline, time after time.

The Colorado River runs far below - beckoning... but that's a walk for another day.

Eventually I turn back, motivated by the fact that if I get caught out after dark my new-found friends will have to come out and look for me.

I make the ascent as the sun sinks spreading golden light over the rock faces.

Golden light at the rim of the Canyon.

As I reach the rim of the Canyon I re-enter the icy gale and stand waiting in rapidly coagulating darkness for a shuttle bus to take me back to Grand Canyon Village. Once there I still have the seven miles to ride back to Tusayan and as I haven’t managed to replace my headlamp yet I realise that I will have to ride on the highway without lights. The bus driver drops me off at a strategic location in the village and gives me directions for a short cut to the highway.

The roads are totally unlit and I can’t see anything at all unless a car passes me from behind. Cars coming in the opposite direction blind me completely and the cars can’t see me at all. I stop when I reach the highway and decide to try my luck hitch-hiking. After several pick-ups speed by I get a lift with a some Native Americans and sit huddled with my bike in the tray of the truck freezing but safe for the seven miles ride to Tusayan. I reach the house at about 8pm, just about the time when people start to worry but before anybody was motivated to come looking for me.

Tank, a Canyon guide and resident of Casa de Cougar.

Tank pointing out the Jackalope.

Three days pass: walking, talking, eating and staying warm at night. Jess tells me I can ride to Flagstaff on forestry tracks and so I go to the Ranger’s Office in search of maps and information. The man whose job it is to sell me maps is enthusiastic about the idea and spends twenty minutes making photos copies to save me $10. He gives me a compass, as well.

I could happily stay at Casa de Cougar for a long time but eventually I manage to repack my belongings into my panniers and load my bike. Tank cooks a huge breakfast to send me on my way and and then I set off into the forest towards Flagstaff.

A mega breakfast to send me on my way - a big fry-up of eggs, potatoes, sausage. My first experience of Southern biscuits and apple butter. Yum! Good cycling food.

A constant stream of shipping containers cross the continent in both directions.

In the morning, I contemplate my options. I am heading for the Grand Canyon. The maps I have at my disposal are from a cheap road atlas I bought in Baker from which I pulled out the pages that covered my route south and threw away the rest. The secondary roads are marked on these maps, but only very vaguely. I can see a paved road, of about sixty miles, heading north from just east of Peach Springs toward a place called Supai on the western end of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. An unpaved road, of about fifty miles, links this road to the highway to the main tourist destinations on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I have no information about Supai and I know nothing of the terrain but I am already keen to abandon well-travelled tarmac again in favour of more remote regions.

I ride into Peach Springs, which, despite the pretty name, turns out to be an impoverished reservation town, in search of more information. Boarded up and burnt out buildings line the highway and run-down houses are surrounded by rusting car bodies. The sky is grey and the air cold. Nobody is on the streets; there is no reason to be as there are no shops and nowhere at all to go.

A reservation building on the highway west of Peach Springs.

The only sign of life is at the Hualapai Lodge – a tourist facility that seems virtually deserted by patrons but reasonably well staffed. When I express an interest in the road to Supai, people are bemused.

“But there is nothing there,” they exclaim.

“It’s going to snow,” another person warns.

The maps available at the tourist information desk add nothing to my existing knowledge but I am undeterred. I ride off armed with all but useless maps to investigate whatever ‘nothing’ there is to see on the road to Supai.

I realise on the way out of town that I have forgotten to fill my water bags and, reluctant to return two miles downhill to the Hualapai Lodge, I ask a women leaving her house if there is anywhere I can get water. After a moments, hesitation she allows me into her house to fill my bag at the kitchen sink and then I am on my way.

Once I turn off Route 66, the drivers of every car on the road slow and stare at me. One women passes me and then takes the trouble to make a U-turn to return to ask me if I am lost. I assure her that I am not. She drives off and then clearly unconvinced I know what I am doing stops again, reverses and asks where I am going. I tell her, that even though I might not know what I will find when I get there, that Supai is my destination and that I am intending to ride from there to the highway. She shakes her head and warns me that the unmade road is very rough and then drives away.

The road is lined with memorial markers and, unlike the ones on Route 66, these appear to signify the actual sites of fatal accidents and I am struck by their frequency. These roadside memorials are ubiquitous on highways, all over the world, but their density here, on what appears to be a lightly trafficked, largely straight, tarmac road, is troubling.

The monuments are elaborate and well-cared for – ornate crosses sporting colourful bouquets of plastic flowers, balloons, toys – dedicated to un-named individuals simply referred to as ‘Sister’, ‘Brother’, ‘Mother’, ‘Daughter’, ‘Son’. This is truly a highway of tears and I think of the book I have just finished, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian in which the protagonist, Arnold Spirit, explains that the difference between growing up as an Indian and growing up as a White is the number of funerals you have to attend – that death is everywhere on the reservation and 90% of it is related to alcohol.

I pass a group of women getting out of a pick-up on the road. They greet me and I enquire if I am lost. I ask them what they are doing. “Looking for pinons,” the senior member of the group informs me. I follow them into the trees by the road to learn what pinon nuts look like.

A pinon nut - traditional food for the Hualapai.

Collecting pinons.

Pinon.

I continue through the grey afternoon. The last five miles of road descends steeply and then ends abruptly in a carpark overlooking a place that leaves me utterly speechless.

Supai, it turns out, is a Native American settlement in the canyon that is only accessible by foot, mule, or helicopter: home to the Havasupai people, who have fought a long hard battle to get access to their traditional lands in the canyon and on the surrounding plateau. The carpark is full of the unseen Supai’s residents’ vehicles.

Hualapai Hilltop - looking into the Havasu Canyon.

Hualapai Hilltop - looking into the Havasu Canyon.

Havasu Canyon.

Woefully uniformed and unprepared, I don’t have my food or my equipment sufficiently well organised to be able to walk down into the canyon and camp overnight but this is a place that I would very much like to return to. Feeling a little thwarted I cycle, in the dark, back up the hill to where the barely visible, inadequately signposted, unpaved road will lead me across the plateau to Highway 64 and the well-trodden South Rim of the Grand Canyon.