Grand Canyon - Arizona

What it's all about 

Mountain Goats - lots of wildlife

The Grand Canyon is one of the most visited spots in America  - +7M people rode the park shuttle buses last year.  It ranks in most 'top 10 natural wonders of the world' lists.

Most people reading this post will have seen photos of the canyon or actually been there themselves.  We've heard all kinds of accounts from friends and family - 'it's actually not that exciting to look at' to 'we hiked from the south rim to the north rim and we're going back again next year'.

The Desert View of the South Rim

The canyon will:

1. Make you feel small
2. Help you appreciate the vastness of time
3. Challenge you physically,  if you choose to tackle it
4. Bring you close to wildlife

Like most natural features in this corner of America, the canyon will give you a globally unique way to see how water, rock and time interplay to reveal human, animal, plant and celestial history.

To be clear, you can walk among sandstone and limestone that is 1.8 Billion years old - beat that!

The park offers habitat to many elk, goats, birds, lizards, snakes and more.

What we did

We only spent 2 nights in the Grand Canyon,  due mainly to the fact that our kids had already seen and been impressed by so many other examples of water-eating-stone in Utah... and, since the canyon is so huge, it is hard for kids to gain an intimate understanding through experience - they just can't handle the distances and elevations.

This said, we biked the trails, rode the shuttle buses, visited  the geology museum, walked the rim trail and hiked the Bright Angel trail into the canyon.

We went in late September and there really were no crowds - the Mather campground (unserviced sites) was 1/2 empty.  The RV 'trailer village' was; however, full.

We fell asleep to bugling elk - not in the distance either - I mean on our campsite!  Nathan actually ran into one on the way to the loo at night and it scared the bejesus out of him.

Rutting season  - steer clear of these bad boys

 Mather campground was surprisingly tasteful and 'au naturel' - sites were well spaced and treed... and park rules weren't too oppressive.   Our only gripe was that staff hadn't cleaned up a gooey spill on our picnic table and hadn't emptied some cigarette butts from our fire pit - pretty small potatoes.

Because we didn't attempt any major hikes, we didn't even visit their paid shower facilities.

A Walk Through Time 

This was a highlight for our family - it's a self-guided (assisted) walk along the south rim trail.  Interpretive signs teach you all about the story of the ages the canyon holds for those who take the time to listen.

The Walk Through Time

Park scientists and staff placed markings on the footpath denoting the passage of time.  Kids will enjoy counting - first in years, then decades, then centuries,  then millennia and so on.

Every so often, a rock is presented on a pedestal with an inscription and a matching interpretive sign explaining when in the march of time this rock belonged.

A 1.6B year old stone!

The path tells a story, starting at the geology museum and ending at the visitor's center.  Well worth your time - but I humbly recommend you take the time to read each sign and piece together the geological events in your mind.

view from the geology museum

Terrific displays

Bright Angel Trail

The trailhead

We started this hike around 9:30am... the trail was already quite busy.  The thing about hiking in canyons is that they're not ergonomic from the get-go.  Most people like to hike up first and then take a free ride down - there's a sense of accomplishment having earned your view, per se.

Canyons are deceiving in that it's hard to gauge your energy level/capacity.   The descent is easy and the views are great from the start... so how deep should you go - that's the question?

Hikers enjoying the views

We didn't go too far in, knowing the kids would be huffing on the way back up - just 1.5miles in.  We saw plenty of wildlife...

Deer came walking right up to us (we didn't advance towards him)

Daredevil goats (or sheep?!)

The panoramas were inspiring.

Views from the trail - Zoom in for detail...

We've made every effort to not push our kids too hard on this trip - to pace things for them... I so wanted to hike down much deeper, but the family wasn't up to it - next time!