5 October 2015, Monday

Truce?
We set three traps last night. No mouse this am and no mouse signs
in the car. Were we abandoned for the sweeter smelling restaurants
and trash bins of Tusayan?  We can only hope. We may set the traps
again tonight. All nibble-able food is now secured in plastic boxes.
We repack the car, now version 4.0.  Perhaps we have made Jazz
inhospitable to mice?

We proceed from our lodge to the South Rim Village. Time to catch up
laundry before our hike, then to Maswik Lodge to check in. While
we are in our room beginning to get organized we have an impressive
thunder storm. We walk over to El Tovar Hotel on the rim for an early
dinner at their lounge. All of the inside tables are taken. We eat
outside overlooking the canyon. It is cool and raining. All we see is grey clouds. As we
eat, the rain stops and, as a curtain slowly rising on a spectacular
show, the mesas and buttes of the canyon come into view one at a
time.

After dinner we walk back to Maswik to organize in earnest. My pack without
water is 12.6 kg. O’s pack is 14 kg without water. Not bad packing
for six days and 5 nights, and that’s with rain gear that we may not
need. We plan on an early breakfast tomorrow morning before meeting
up with our group at 8 am. We have also decided not to risk attracting more mice with baited traps. We believe our stowaway mouse has moved on to greener pastures. We think we have cleared the car of all mouse accessible food.