Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and Antelope Canyon

We got an early start this morning to check out the eastern part of the park on our way out of town.  One of the more bizarre things about this trip is that we are always headed in a one way direction.  We find ourselves saying, “Oh, that looks neat, let’s try to stop on our way back”. Just to realize that we won’t ever be passing through that way again. The “desert” section on the park is just as majestic as the rest.  We pulled into a few scenic overlooks, stopped to climb a watch tower and were thankful the whole time that it wasn’t this windy the day before.  

After saying good bye to the Grand Canyon we traveled up to Page, Arizona to see the Horseshoe Bend section of the Colorado River.  It was an easy, but busy, “hike” from the parking lot to the cliff.  It is really an amazing view to see the river do almost a complete turn around around a piece of land.  Gabe took a classic picture of his feet hanging over the edge, which we certainly didn’t allow the kids to copy;)  The next stop in Page was to do the Lower Antelope Canyon tour.  This is a slot canyon which is mostly beneath the level of the ground. It is so bizarre that you wouldn’t even know it was there from the outside, but the amazing beauty of the inside is unbeatable.  Honestly, we just kept taking picture after picture which we realize no one will ever look at, but it was just so incredible! 

From here we continued onto our home for the next few nights in Oderville, Utah, but not without making one small side stop first at Paria.  This was a neat little stop in the lower section of Grand Staircase National Monument.  Paria was an abandoned film set used to film many Western movies and shows. Apparently you could go in the old buildings, etc. but a few years ago the site fell victim to vandalism and arson.  So, the buildings are no longer there, but the beauty surrounding it certainly is!  We were disappointed that we couldn’t see the buildings since I am positive I would have recognized them from my Dad’s love of all Westerns, but we were so glad we took the side trip for the beautiful scenery!

PB&J Count: 22

Grand Canyon- South Rim

Last night, after arriving, we were so tired we didn’t bother to actually try and see the Grand Canyon.  This morning we had some time before our bike rental started so we walked out to Mather Point. Honestly, I have no idea how to describe the Grand Canyon.  The Hoover Dam was impressive, Niagra Falls were impressive, but I don’t think I would be misspeaking to say that it was the most impressive thing I have ever seen.  Before this trip I wasn’t really excited about the Grand Canyon, presuming that it had been overrated… obviously I was wrong.  It is partially the beauty in the layers of looking back in time, but more so was really just the enormity and vastness of it.  We took so many pictures, but honesly, there is no way a picture will ever even come close to seeing it in person.  

            

After we pulled ourselves away we made it to our bike rental. There is a section of road only accessible by shuttle or walking/biking so we spent the morning exploring this section of the park on bikes.  We had an absolutely beautiful day!  It was in the lower 70s and sunny with a light breeze.  In the afternoon we took on the Bright Angel Trail down into the canyon.  We would have wanted to go a bit further down, but since we didn’t start until later in the afternoon, we didn’t want to push our luck with the kids.  The trail is straight down the canyon wall via a series of switch backs.  It is a bit misleading because it takes little effort to go down, but you still need to come back up, so we had to be careful to not go too far.  We decided to go to the 1.5 mile rest stop.  Noah was having some anxiety because all of the signs say that it takes twice as long to go up as to go down, so naturally, he timed us… as it turns out, the kids haven’t lost their hiking skills and we actually made it back to the top faster than we hiked down.  We planned to take the shuttle back to our car, but the lines for the shuttle were so long, we just decided to walk.  It was way longer than just waiting for the shuttle, but we got to explore lots more of the rim.  The kids were, again, troopers and despite being super tired we made it almost 13 miles, over 25,000 steps and climbed 97 flights of stairs… I think everyone will sleep well tonight!

PB&J Count: 16

Hoover Dam

We got an early start this morning after another late night, but everyone is still hanging in there;) Our first stop this morning was the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.  The kids weren’t super excited to get out of the car again so soon. Our next stop was the Hoover Dam.  The dam is really just so impressive both driving up to it, standing on top of it and being down inside it.  It was nearing 100 degrees in the blistering sun, so we were glad to start the tour which was all underground.  

After a few hours we felt like we saw every possible exhibit, walked and drove across the dam. The fact that we even have Hoover Dam is pretty amazing.  The engineering and forethought put into it was incredible.  We would never actually be able to build something on that scale again given the cheap labor, 363 days of work per year as well as the lack of safety concerns, but impressive none the less.  

After having a car picnic lunch (because it was way too hot to eat outside) we drove the long and tedious stretch to the Grand Canyon.  Everyone was pretty exhausted by this point in our trip so we had a low key evening of pizza on the floor in our room and getting everything ready for biking and hiking in the Grand Canyon tomorrow!

PB&J Count: 12