The Grandest Canyon

We had four nights in the canyon. Jim booked us in Trailer Village, an RV park run as a private concession. It was nice to be so close and not to have to enter the park each day. The campground did not have showers, but we could go to Camper Services down the road and take one for $2.50. Since we had full hookups, we decided to use our shower. We have a small “wet bath”, with a toilet, a curtain that can go all the way around and a shower nozzle. We have only used it once or twice before, because our water tank is small as is the dump tank. With full hookups we didn’t need to worry about that, so our shower worked well for us!

It was not a long trip from Flagstaff, so we settled in quickly, drove over to the Visitors Center to get our first look at the canyon. Ahhh! I had visited in the winter of 77, while visiting a boyfriend’s family. It was cold and snowy and poor visibility. Jim stopped by about the same time after doing a term in Tucson. We took the boys to the north rim in 1999 on our month-long camping trip. It was monsoon season and it rained three out of four days. Now this time it was perfect! Great weather, cool at night—we’re at 6000 feet—but comfortable during the days. We did a lot of the rim trail each day. There is a shuttle bus, so we took that to a spot and walked 2 to 3 miles, then got back on the bus. The park wasn’t really crowded, but all the major lookouts had crowds. You just had to walk a quarter of a mile on the rim trail and you were by yourself.

We did watch two Celtic playoff games at the Yavapi Lodge. That was fun. Having them on at 4pm made it pretty quiet. We could walk to the lodge and grocery store. I sent Jim to do laundry on Saturday afternoon, he dropped me off at the Catholic chapel. It was a lovely Mass.

We did make it to watch the sunset one evening. I chatted with a man from the Netherlands. I told him my sister was there, looking at the tulips, he said “I’ve looked at them for over 70 years, they’ll be there next year”. Amazing the amount of foreign tourists there! Lots of different languages. A woman from South Korea asked me where the showers were, I had to tell her, a quarter mile down the road and they cost $2.50. On our last night we went to El Tovar, a hotel restaurant in a historic lodge. It was a lovely dinner. Jim said that in another 15 years if we’re not camping we’ll come and stay here and sit on the porch and watch the canyon. I didn’t make it up to see the sunrise. Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings Time, so sunrise was 5 am and sunset 7 pm. I hated to leave but more pretty spots are coming up.