The Grand Canyon

Established as a National Monument in 1908 and made a National Park in 1913, The Grand Canyon gets about 5 Million visitors a year. Though we try to avoid extremely crowded places such as this, the Canyon was a good distance from our last stop, Prescott, so we decided to brave the crowds and spend a few nights right in the park to marvel at this incredible geologic wonder.

After setting up camp, we walked half a mile to the main visitor center and then a couple of miles along the Canyon rim. No matter how many times one visits the Canyon, you can't help but be awed by its immensity and the colors that change with the light.

It really is GRAND!

Sunday afternoon crowd at Mather Point, close to the main visitor center.

There are three campgrounds in the Park at the South Rim, and Trailer Village has full hookups (we like our full hookups!). It's not particularly scenic or private, but it's only about half a mile from the Canyon rim and elk walk through at any time of day.

Taken from our front door at 2pm.

A short walk from camp gave us a colorful sunset view into the canyon.

On our first full day we biked from camp to Hermits Rest at the West end of the Park and back for a total of 21.5 miles of paved trail/road with excellent views into the Canyon. The great thing about the Park: most visitors don't venture far from the Village or the shuttle bus stops, and only about 1% go below the rim. Thus, as we rode, we would sometimes hit a vista point as the shuttle bus dropped off a load of sightseers, but more often than not, we would have the trail to ourselves.

Fellow RVers Sean and Marian (whom we met in Sedona) arrived in the Park and we enjoyed a couple of excellent meals together as well as a little hike below the rim. Calling it a "little hike" is kind of an understatement because what goes down must come back up! Starting at the South Kaibab trail head we dropped about 1200 feet into the Canyon in about 1.5 miles to Cedar Ridge.

The Park tries hard to make visitors understand how difficult the walk back up to the rim can be!

We road to the trail head on a full shuttle bus. In retrospect, an earlier start than 10am would have meant a more peaceful trail experience...

Down, down, down!

We had a great rest stop at Cedar Ridge before the steep hike back to the rim.

The colors and layers in the canyon never cease to WOW!

We're happy to have experienced Grand Canyon together (we'd each visited before) and with Sean and Marian...but we'll probably avoid the South Rim in the future. Some day I'd like to visit the North Rim.

Today we're heading into Utah for a couple of weeks...I hope you'll come along for the adventure!