Grand Canyon For Fall Break

For Fall break, we took a trip to the Grand Canyon. We have been looking forward to this trip for 2 years. We weren't able to make it to the Grand Canyon when Alyssa had her fourth grade National Parks pass, so we knew it was one of the first National Parks we wanted to visit when Ashley was in fourth grade. We decided to visit the south rim and quickly learned that because of how long the drive is and the lack of campgrounds close to the park that it would be better to go without our camper this time. We found a vacation rental near Williams, AZ that was big enough to sleep up to 10 people. We decided to invite Brian's family to join us and we were so glad we did. The kids always get along so well together and this trip was no exception. Having cousins around, made all of the walking and hiking a lot more fun for all of us.
We started off our explorations walking along the rim trail. We let the kids get close to the edge, only when there was a railing.

We brought the GoPro along and had fun figuring out how to take group pictures with our selfie stick.

These next two pictures were taken at the desert view tower located on the southeast side of the grand canyon. It was a long drive out there, but we were so glad we made the trip. We were allowed to climb up to the top of this tower and see the views. It was pretty amazing.

The kids had as much fun climbing fun trees and sitting on interesting logs and benches as they did looking at the big hole in the ground.

 It sure had some amazing views.

Our cabin was nice. The kids especially loved this porch swing and the fun games(including Corn hole and Chess).

On day 2 in the park, we decided to attempt a hike down into the canyon. I had researched hikes beforehand and decided that the most recommended hike was Bright Angel Trail. So that is the one we hiked. I was so nervous, at first, because the trail was not nearly wide enough and the drop off was so steep and far. But after hiking for a bit, I decided that I either got used to the drop off, or it wasn't nearly as steep as we hiked further down. We made it to this tunnel pretty quickly and had the goal of turning around at the second tunnel(which the sign claimed was about 3/4 of a mile from the trail head).

 Ashley and Lydi were not happy about this "no dogs" sign.

We never made it to that second tunnel for fear that the kids would not make it back to the top. As it was, we had to leave Alyssa sitting on the side of the trail. She was a little more affected by the heights than the rest of us and had headaches and upset stomach pains because of the sheer cliff drop offs. The kids did great and we all made it back to the top without too much difficulty. I had to carry Camden most of the way, but Tyler walked almost the whole time. After the hike, we had a picnic.

Shortly after we finished the lunch, we visited a lookout where we could see the trail that we had hiked. I labeled the points of interest below. The red line is the part that we hiked.

We visited some other lookout points along the west side of the south rim via shuttle bus, but had our experience ruined a bit due to a bus driver on a power trip who ended up kicking us off of his bus. We were kind of done with shuttle buses and lookout points after that.

Hermits Rest was the last site we visited. It was mostly a trail head, but the shuttle bus stopped there for 10 minutes, so we got off, used the rest rooms, and walked around a little bit. Alyssa found a book in the gift shop there that basically had different accounts of people who had died at the grand canyon. She commented that she wanted to read and not read the book. She was interested to know how many had died there and how, but didn't want to scare herself by reading it.
We got off the shuttle back at the first stop where we got on and were glad to be done with the shuttles. I thought it was cute seeing these little boys hold each others hands.

Brian and Maryn headed back to the cabin after that, but we stuck around a little longer to finish up the kids Junior Ranger Program. I think this is the 3rd or 4th Junior Ranger badge that they have earned. Camden missed out on earning his because he fell asleep.

Overall, it was a fun trip. We were glad that we finally made it there with our kids. We were especially glad that we had Brian and Maryn and family there to enjoy the weekend with us.