Day 19 – 4841 miles … A very large ditch

We pack up the site and leave Circle Pines KOA by 730A, the drive to the Grand Canyon is a little over 1hr from here, and we want to get moving, as we are starting to feel the “stress” of time and trying to get home. The drive from Williams to the park is in great shape, as it probably should be considering the hundreds of thousands of people that visit here.

We use our National Park yearly pass (which we bought in St. Augustine) and get in. We cannot park at the visitor center, as they are remodeling the parking area, and cannot accommodate RV's. We continue about a mile further and park at the market. From here, he gear up and walk the .7 miles to the visitor center.

The visitor center is impressive, it is almost like a major resort attraction … and as you would expect there are huge numbers of people here … still, the facility is so large, that we never felt crowded or overwhelmed by the people here. We find the park ranger station and get the Junior Ranger book for here. It, like the Bryce, requires the attendance of a ranger talk.

We make our way to the rim and walk along for about a mile. The views are amazing. It is hard to describe … even seeing them in books and on television, the sheer size and magnitude of this is something that needs to be  experienced. We slowly walk the rim trail, which awards us with breathtaking views. It is hard to explain (even there) to the kids that from where we stand to the bottom is mile … one day we will come back and hike to the bottom with them.

We find a bus stop (the park – like Bryce, has buses that shuttle people to/from places) and ride to the “village”. This is the main outpost, has many buildings, including a rail station, a couple of hotels, gift shops, etc … We stop to have lunch at the El Tovar hotel … this is a turn-of-the century grand hotel, with excellent food and service. Lunch wasn’t too expensive and we all enjoyed it.

We finished in time to catch a demonstration of Navajo dancing. This was a very nice 30 minute show, where 3 dancers shared their culture with the audience. All the girls were very interested and the show held their attention throughout. At the end we got some pictures with the dancers.

We attended the “Family Fun” talk led by a ranger. This was basically targeting ages 3 to 6, so Kate found it a little boring. The ranger read a story to the kids and used it  to explain the wildlife found in the park. The book, “Who pooped in the park.”, was about animal scat (poo) and animal prints. The highlight for the kids was at the end when the ranger passed around a variety of different scat for the kids to examine. This was, of course, fake scat … Elk, Deer, Cougar, Coyote, Squirrel and a few others. I was left in disbelief that there is an industry for fake scat! Who would have thought that you could buy fake elk poo, wow!

We found another ranger station, presented our junior ranger books and the girls received their badges. We rode the bus back to our RV and left the park around 4P, heading east along the rim. This was the “long way” out, but would provide several more views of the canyon and exit through Navajo lands.

Once you leave the park on the east side, you continue through very “desolate” land, red dirt, scrub brush, dust everywhere … you do get a great glimpse of the canyon on the left side for a couple of hours. We drive through Flagstaff and get to within a couple of hours of Albuquerque, NM. Around 130A we find a truck stop for the night. All said, impressive experience, and one that should not be missed.