The Grand Canyon

After a week of summer, we hit the road to start our trek to my parents 50th wedding anniversary party. We decided to take the scenic route and stop at a few places we have wanted to see.  It took us two full days of driving. We drove through western Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, then our destination in Arizona . . .THE GRAND CANYON!  The kids were troopers with their movies and gaming devices.

 Military members and their families get into national parks for free, and we love national parks so why not try and see them all! They were doing road construction on the entrance so the suspense was killing us to be able to park and see the canyon.  It was breathtaking! We hiked along the rim and even though it was the same view it still was so cool to see and I wanted to take a million pictures but I knew they would all look the same.

We walked along the Rim Trail to Yavapai Point and Geology Museum, then to check out a trail head called Bright Angel. We decided to just go for it and walk down a little bit on it. It was a dirt and dusty path down into the canyon, it was really getting hot, so we didn’t go too far down because we knew we would have to come back up. 

We had lunch at a cafe, then went back to the hotel to rest.  I took the kids swimming for about 45 minutes then we went through Wendy’s drive-thru and went back to the GC to watch the sunset. As the sun was going down the shadows on the canyons were slowly moving up, it was really cool to watch and I tried to capture it on a time-lapse video on my phone but it didn’t really work. It was just one of those moments you had to be there to witness.  The kids were exhausted, we had gone about 7 miles (over 16,000 steps) that day going to the different lookout points and those two hikes. They fell asleep very fast.

Day 2:

We told the kids the night before that we wouldn’t be in a hurry to get up and get going like we were the day before, and wouldn’t you know they were up at 6:30 ready to go! Our hotel does not serve breakfast it is called the Red Feather and has a Native American theme. We waited too long to make our reservations so all of the cabins and lodges that are IN the park were booked, but the little town of Tusanya where our hotel was is only a couple miles from the entrance to the GC.  They have a couple hotels too, a steak house, a pizza place, a Mexican place, a Wendy’s and a McDonalds. A lot of touristy tours and gift shops, a general store, and a National Geographic Museum. 

Scott had bought muffins and smoothie drinks the night before, we had those and headed out to the park, we knew right where we wanted to go first. The Orange shuttle bus to the South Kaibab Trailhead. Through my research, I discovered that this was a good shorter hike that gave you the effect of going down the canyon but still had an incredible view. The sooner you started it in the morning the less you had to deal with the sun.  Here is the beginning of the hike:

Our view as we went down

We were in the shade most of the time, the switchbacks weren’t that steep, but still a challenge. When we first started we had the choice to either go to Ohh Ahh Point and back which was 1.5 miles, or go past that to Cedar Point which was 3 miles total. We all decided that we could do the 3 miles just fine, as we were going down a park ranger stopped us and asked us where we were going and when we told him he highly discouraged us because of the record breaking high temperatures that the park was going to have that day, he said we needed at least 2 liters of water for each of us. We thanked him for his counsel and went on not sure what we were going to do. We got to Ohh Ahh Point and stopped and took some pictures and had a snack.  Ian and Rylan wanted to keep going down, Madelyn and I didn’t care, and Scott thought that we should probably listen to the park ranger. So we turned around and headed up the canyon. It was so hot (later we looked and it was about 90 degrees) and the sun was starting to peek over the rim on to us. When we got to the top all covered in sweat we talked to a family that had gone the full 3 miles to Cedar Point and they said the view didn’t change much and that it was in full sun.  So we were kind of glad we turned around when we did. It was a beautiful hike and I just couldn’t stop taking pictures. I was a little nervous with Ian and the steep drop offs, the shoes he was wearing were his school tennis shoes he has had all year with hardly any traction left. He slipped a couple times and Scott had to hold his arm for the last leg and caught him from falling a couple times. 

Afterwards, we took the bus back to the visitors center and drove out to the Far East side of the canyon called Desert view. It was a different perspective and you could better see the Colorado River. There was a watchtower you could climb up and look down into the canyon. We were so high that we could see birds soaring below us.  It was close to lunch time, and Scott noticed an ice cream place, (we kept trying to get ice cream on the other side of the park the day before but the line was always ridiculously long) so we seized the moment and had ice cream for lunch! The kids thought that was so great!  Rylan found $7 on the trail from the parking lot to the watchtower and he was so torn when what to do with it, we told him that he could try and turn it into the cashier at the park in case someone came looking for it but it was highly unlikely they would.  He wanted to do the right thing but it was also only $7, he tried to turn it in but the lady said I can't do anything about that why don’t you just keep it.   We got a view snacks to supplement the ice cream and then made our way back to the hotel. We took quick naps, the kids wanted to swim again. They really miss having a pool. Then we went to the pizza place for dinner, came back and watched the Disney Channel and the kids all fell asleep by 8:30