The Grand Canyon!

Saturday morning came and it was time to say goodbye to Sedona, so we packed up camp and jumped on the road to Flagstaff, which happened to be on the way to our next stop: The Grand Canyon.  I found La Bellavia, a cute little restaurant with great breakfast reviews, on yelp, so we stopped there for pancakes and an omelet!

Within 2 hours, we were at The Grand Canyon!  I can not believe I lived in Arizona for 6 years and only came to Sedona and the Grand Canyon for 24 hours each, and only once!   They’re sooo close and so amazing!

We checked into our $16 a night campground, set up camp and headed out!

We had heard about the “free shuttles” that take you to lots of different look out spots around the Canyon, so we went to the westernmost shuttle route and saw it leaving just as we were walking up, so we headed over to the Rim Trail and did a little hiking instead.

When we got back up to the top, we jumped on the shuttle to “Hermit’s Rest”, where we grabbed some ice cream - like the true fatties we are, and then hopped back on the shuttle and got off at Mohave Point and walked a mile or so on the trail past Hopi Point to Powell Point, all along the edge of the cliffs!  There’s one point that’s almost 3,000 feet STRAIGHT DOWN people!  

I had to beg Aaron to come back from the edge so many times… and he in turn had to tell me to chill out!  lol 

We got back to the village around 5 or so and drove back to camp, waving to all the wildlife along the way. J

… Then we both went out into the forest and gathered some firewood to make our little campfire.   We could have just bought wood for $7, but $7 adds up fast and why buy wood when you can just gather it yourself?  That’s part of the fun of roughing it, right?!

After dinner, we jumped in the 4runner and drove a couple miles to the general store to pick up something we can hang on our Christmas tree (We like to have little memoires of each place we go) and to get some jiffy pop, campfire style, popcorn!   We spent the rest of the night by the campfire, then popped the popcorn and huddle in the tent to watch another Modern Family episode!

(instagram pic) 

We were up early with a 4:30am alarm!  Ugh, I hate alarms!  But this time it was worth it… We bundled up with all the layers we could find and drove over to Mather’s Point to watch the beautiful sunrise!

I had wanted to show Aaron El Tavor, an old historic hotel, built in the early 1900’s that I had had lunch at with my parents, 7 years ago for my mom’s 60^th birthday.  

  I was hoping they had a coffee shop, but got even luckier when the concierge invited us to go ahead and help ourselves to some coffee upstairs in the mezzanine!  SCORE!

We had a couple more last looks at the canyon after coffee...

... did a load of laundry at the campgrounds, tore down camp and jumped back on the road!  We’re getting pretty good at this whole putting up and tearing down of camp!  We’ve got it under 45 minutes!  We’re also getting really good at killing bugs with our 4 runner!  Poor guy looked so nice when we bought him last week and now this!  

After seeing all those elk at the Grand Canyon and signs for mountain lions, I’m just hoping bugs are all that meet the hood! :) Off to Zion National Park!