Now We Know Why It's Called The GRAND Canyon

We had to fill two weeks worth of time since we had to postpone our Ct. trip home. So after extending Phoenix six days we took a jaunt up to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Speaking of turning a negative into a positive. We also added a few days to our upcoming stop in Sedona to cover the fourteen days.

We stayed in Williams, AZ. which is an hour from the Grand Canyon. It's a cute little town that bills itself as "The Gateway to the Grand Canyon". Route 66 is the big town marketing focus since it runs through the middle of the it. Route 66 back in the day was the best way to travel from Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Los Angeles, CA. It was one of America's original highways dating back to the 1920's and became even more infamous after some diddies were written about it.

The first day we arrived in the late afternoon. We got set-up at our campsite and then chilled before taking a drive into town. Our first thoughts were that the town was pretty hokey. Since it was early in the week a lot of the restaurants were closed and since Main St. USA (Route 66) was a shopping area everything was closed at night there too.

The drive there took three and a half hours. It was very scenic, and, the Arizona highways are the prettiest ones we've traveled so far. There was an eighteen mile stretch that had a 6% slope downhill (which is pretty damn steep) that wound around like a formula 1 racetrack. Brad white-knuckled that part of the drive, and after, dreaded having it to do again. Hey, it's all part of the journey.

We stayed in a muddy-ass campground that had a weird motel attached to it, with fire engines and railroad cars adorning the entrance. The space had a lot of personality but the mud and puddles were annoying as heck.

On our first full day in the area we went to the Grand Canyon. It was an hour away. Kathy drove, which, when it comes to the car she does that about seventy-five percent of the time. We were both excited at the prospects of a great day and we were not disappointed.

It Was Truly Spectacular!!!!!!!

We spent the entire day there up and through sunset. Twelve thousand two hundred and twenty steps that first day...but who's counting? When you check in with the Ranger at the entry to the Grand Canyon, they make a map of the park available to you. We followed it to a tee and started at Mathers Point. We hit nine different spots. It was amazing that at every stop, at every look, the Grand Canyon looks different.

The pictures below are all of the sunset that first day at Hopi Point. We hope you can get a feel for it. It was awesome!!

The second day at the Canyon we took the twenty-five mile Scenic Dessert Drive. The drive heads to the eastward side of the park. So, it was in the opposite direction of the day before. We made another five stops along the way. They included Grandview Point, Moran Point, Lipman Point, Navajo Point and the Dessert View Watchtower.

Just after our first stop we ran into a couple Cow Elk moseying the woods on the opposite road side of the Canyon. They were just hanging out as if no one was gawking at them. And there were plenty of gawkers. Brad took a ninety second video of them but we had trouble downloading it to this blog. Sorry! It was pretty cool. We tried! After the day of touring we picnicked at the last spot at the Dessert View Watchtower. We hope you can enjoy the pictures of our day,

We only missed a handful of spots on our first day at the Canyon so we opted not to make the two hour round trip back for a third day. We did the town (Williams) instead. It was much better than our first night there. It was daytime! The shops were much larger on the inside than what they appeared on the outside. All the shop owners were personal, upbeat, and friendly. The stores and shops were fun and had some cool Route 66 stuff. We started the day having breakfast at the Pine Country and a magnificent dinner at the Red Raven. Brad had duck and Kathy had a lamb stew. We started with mussels and clams in a white wine broth that we continued to spoon after the mussels and clams were gone. Great meal, especially considering the one we had earlier in the week in town was terrible.

If we had better internet service while writing this blog we would have been able to better display and organize it. We hope the pics told the story well enough. Thanks for reading down this far and thanks for following our journey. Kathy and Brad