I have been waiting for this part of our trip for YEARS! Since the kids were babies, we've talked about visiting the Grand Canyon when they were old enough. We always said we would do a summer trip out west once Sarah hit 2nd or 3rd grade. Then covid hit and we talked about getting an RV, and through all of our discussions, we kept coming back to "...and we can go to the Grand Canyon". Of course there are other things we wanted to see, but The Grand Canyon just seemed like the quintessential American family road trip. When we set out in the beginning of April, Grand Canyon still seemed so far off. But by the time we were ready to leave Williams, I was absolutely giddy with excitement.
The drive from Williams to Grand Canyon was only an hour... and as luck would have it, our checkout at Williams was 11 and check-in at Grand Canyon was 12 (really early by campground standards). We stayed at Trailer Village, which is inside the National Park and only a mile walk to the South Rim. It's a completely insane reservation to get, and for a while I didn't think we'd be able to stay there, but I kept checking every day and one morning a 2 night reservation popped up. Woohoo!
When we arrived, and as soon as we hooked up and leveled the RV, we immediately walked the bike trail over to the rim. It was so breathtaking to get the first glimpse of it. Even Zach, who is at the age to think pretty is gross, walked over and said "Wow, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen". The only downside of the first day exploring was that it was SO windy! Like, I thought the kids were going to blow into the canyon windy. Zach of course wanted to climb to every edge to look over and he kept getting annoyed that I would pull him back. The wind knocked me off balance a few times, it just wasn't the day for peering over the edges.
The second day, our first full day, Zach and I woke up early and took a walk. When I booked this campground, the thing I was most excited about (besides the easy walk to the canyon) was the report that Elk walk around the campground, right up to the RVs. We went out before breakfast to see if we could spot any. While we were out, Zach said "I wonder what the canyon looks like in the morning". We had already missed sunrise, but took a nice walk over anyway. It was nice spending some one on one time with him, since he's turning into a little too-cool pre-teen in front of my eyes. Unfortunately, we didn't see any Elk.
After breakfast, the whole family packed into the car to ride down to Desert View Watchtower. Just after we pulled out of our campground we found the elk! There was a whole group of them taking their time, lumbering across the street. We also saw some wild horses wandering around the forest. It was so cool.
Desert View Watchtower was about a half hour east of the campground. Unfortunately, the tower itself was closed, but it offered some different views of the canyon. On our ride back we stopped at lots of different little overlooks and stopped to have a picnic lunch.
That morning, before we left, we hiked down the Bright Angel Trail. This is the trail into the canyon that the mules use, but we didn't see any heading down- I'm guessing they get an earlier start. We only walked down maybe 3/4 mile of the trail, because we knew our little legs would need to be able to walk back up it again... gotta quit while we're ahead! It was neat looking up the walls of the canyon... and humbling to look down and see how much further it went! Most people going down were trying to make it to the 1.5 mile rest house.
I'm just gonna dump a bunch of random pics here, because I took way too many!
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