Grand Canyon Vacation

[nissangirl74]

Last week, two of my good friends from Tennessee came out to visit. Neither of them have been here before so it was a chance for me to really show off some of the amazing things Arizona has to offer. Sedona was first on the list. I wanted them to have the chance to see the Chapel of the Cross and the state park before it was shut down. It was raining too hard at the park to get out and see anything but we did get to go to Chapel of the Cross and visit some of the local art galleries and Tlaquepaque.







Friday, we rented a van and headed up North to Williams. We planned to stay the night there and drive up to the canyon the following morning. Williams is a very small town. Its main reason for survival is its close proximity to the canyon. It is very much a tourist town but has escaped the stereotype. We stayed at The Lodge on Route 66. A very nice place to stay, I would recommend it to anyone planning on making the trip. The Pine Top Restaurant is a must for dinner, the Grand Canyon Cafe has the best breakfast menu. Bring your appetite to both. They feed you like they think you are starving to death.



Another part of the appeal in Williams is the fantastic views. A few snapshots from the road....







Probably the most fantastic sunset I have ever seen in person. As beautiful as the picture is, it can't even begin to convey what I saw...



Saturday morning we drove 45 minutes north to the Grand Canyon. My friends had never seen it and neither had any of the kids so it was a truly amazing day of discovery for them. seeing the canyon in person is disconcerting at first. It almost doesn't look real. It is a truly beautiful marvel and an amazing scientific map of the passage of time. The scenery is beautiful but the science is amazing. It's so hard to fathom the amount of time it took to create this place and the fact that it is till continuing.


Me, Priss, Dar, Saraya, and my friend Venassa. Greg took this picture from across the gorge.









a very curious little friend


the one cloud in the sky




the mule trail leading down into the canyon. If you walk, it takes a full day to get to the bottom.


roofs of the houses at the bottom of the canyon (did not know until I started researching this trip that people were allowed to live here)


My friends Shawn and Venassa


As always, here is the link to the entire photobucket album. It was hard for me to decide what pictures to post, they were all so beautiful. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do. http://s304.photobucket.com/albums/nn16 ... 0/?start=0

~A word of advice. If you go for a visit to the Canyon, please do NOT take small children that have to be well supervised. We walked almost half of the South Rim and there was only one fence that I saw. There have been (true) horror stories about people who have not paid attention and walked right off the edge. One little girl ran off the edge last year, no one close enough to catch her. This is not the place for them.~

[Otto.]

Looks like a great time.

That chapel is beautiful.

[93coupe]

I wonder what the waste removal service is like if you live there.

[Pento240sx]

Wow that is a really beautiful chapel. Great pictures too

[nissangirl74]

I wonder what the waste removal service is like if you live there.

Not sure but I did find this out. All of the water in Williams and the Grand Canyon is trucked in, primarily from Flagstaff. You have to drill down almost 5,000 feet in Williams before you hit water.

[Jesda]

NICE. Last time I was there was 2006. A bunch of Japanese tourists unloaded from a bus and proceeded to crowd me, pushing me toward the edge of the cliff. I had to put my hands forward like a diver and squeeze through the pack.

[nissangirl74]

Luckily, it wasn't very packed this weekend. In another month it will be way too crowded for me to enjoy it. Some people make their hotel reservations a year or more in advance.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Did you go out on the transparent-floored Skywalk? I want to go back to the grand canyon just for that.

[AZhitman]

I wonder what the waste removal service is like if you live there.

The only people who live IN the canyon are the Havasupai... Here's a neat article about them (also answers the waste question):

Located thirty miles west of Grand Canyon Village at the end of a long dirt road, and an even longer trail, is a world apart. It is the spectacular home of the Havasupai Indians, whose reservation lies within a side canyon of the Grand Canyon. This isolated little village is a stark contrast to the congestion of Grand Canyon Village, which every year draws 3-5 million visitors to overlooks above the mile deep chasm that is the Grand Canyon.

Havasupai is sublime on a smaller scale. Only about 25,000 visitors annually descend into this world of more intimate beauty. Most visitors to the village of Supai, the heart of the reservation, come on foot, descending through a red-rock inner gorge tucked into the massive limestone walls of an outer gorge like one exquisite gift box within another.

The 8-mile hike begins at Hualapai Hilltop, located at the end of a paved road about 90 miles northwest of Seligman in northwestern Arizona. The first 1 1/4 miles maneuver through a series of steep switchbacks, losing 1,100 feet in elevation. After that, the going is easy for canyon country, with the trail descending an additional 900 feet the rest of the way.

It took thousands of millenniums of pounding by summer tempests, of prying by winter cold and of battering by the chocolate-color torrents of seasonal flash floods to create it.

The village of Supai rests at the bottom of the canyon, astride a crystalline blue-green stream called Havasu Creek. Many of the homes in the village sport satellite dishes that bring in all the television shows and movies residents could want. But there are no paved roads. No parking lots. No internal combustion engines except for that of an occasional tractor preparing fields for corn, melons and squash.

The cafe is in downtown Supai, which also has a guest lodge, elementary school, tribal offices and the only post office in the United States that conducts its business by mule train. Visitors can send postcards with the coveted "Mule Train Mail - Havasupai Indian Reservation" postmark.

Tourism is the principal source of income for the 678-member tribe. Just about every family in the tribe is involved somehow in tourism. The men find work with the pack trains or in maintaining the trails that are periodically washed out by summertime flash floods. Women generally work in the cafe, 24-room lodge or the tourism office.

The tribe's physical isolation, which requires a heavy dependence on pack animals, makes life an expensive logistical challenge. By the time it has made its way on horseback to the Supai Grocery, a gallon of Clorox costs $5. A 20-ounce box of Cheerios costs $6.30. A half-pound of Folgers coffee sells for $7.50. Many families seek alternatives. They keep a car in at parking lot at Hualapai Hilltop and make their grocery runs to Kingman, a two-hour drive away. Instead of taking everything home, they ship the nonperishables to their homes in Supai by U.S. mule-mail.

[nissangirl74]

Did you go out on the transparent-floored Skywalk? I want to go back to the grand canyon just for that.

That would honestly scare me more than sitting on the edge of that cliff (which could have given way at any moment) .

Scroll down to "How to see grand Canyon West" http://www.grandcanyon.com/#3

[MinisterofDOOM]

It took thousands of millenniums of pounding by summer tempests, of prying by winter cold and of battering by the chocolate-color torrents of seasonal flash floods to create it.

Milleniums? MilleniumS?!



Milleniums?!!!!!!!

[nissangirl74]

The canyon shows that mother nature is NOT to be messed with. Check out the VERTICAL lines in this picture. Yeah, the sediment settled VERTICALLY. That's some catastrophic s***.

[93coupe]

The canyon shows that mother nature is NOT to be messed with. Check out the VERTICAL lines in this picture. Yeah, the sediment settled VERTICALLY. That's some catastrophic s***.

That sure is a pretty picture

[PapaSmurf2k3]

I remember when I went. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to try and walk down that path with only about 4 hours of daylight left.

[nissangirl74]

The canyon shows that mother nature is NOT to be messed with. Check out the VERTICAL lines in this picture. Yeah, the sediment settled VERTICALLY. That's some catastrophic s***.

That sure is a pretty picture

My bad, I fixed'd it. :p

[hitbychance]

An to think Evel Kinevil wanted to jump that thing!

[numbnuts240]

I want to go back to the grand canyon just for that.

YESSSS!!!!!! oh, and ride a burro down into the canyon. when i went there was a stupid long wait list that you had to get on something like a year in advance, but we were still able to ride in a puddle jumper and fly through. that was pretty sweet, but i wished we had one of those d-bag pilots that would intentionally try and get you to s*** your pants.

[sx moneypit]

The canyon is a great experience! In 1980 and 81 me and some friends hiked down and spent about a week at the bottom each time.It was amazing to say the least.My father lived in Sedona for almost 20 years and i got to go out there quite a bit, it is Gods country .Everybody should see the canyon in person because pictures just can not describe how awesome it is .

[AppleBonker]

Looks awesome, Bex. It's been a while since I've been to the canyon (maybe about 10 years) and I would love to go back. I'll need to plan a trip out there sometime in the relatively near future.

[Jesda]

The grand canyon is even prettier than Mandy Moore.

Yeah, that's right, I said it. I'm forever angry at my hosting company (and myself for not retaining backups) for losing the beautiful pictures I took of that epic Grand Canyon/Q45/Route 66 road trip.

[nissangirl74]

I have copies of the pics in several different locations.

The canyon is one of the original seven wonders of the world (there are lots of modified lists now). I think it would be cool to see them all before I die. Aurora Borealis, the grand canyon, Paricutin, Victoria falls, Mt. everest, the great barrier reef, and the harbor of Rio de Janeiro.

Has anyone been to any of the others?

[MellowZ32]

nice pix bex! looks like you had a great time!

[s14_girl]

Beautiful pictures! It's been quite a while since I've been to Sedona, and longer since I visited the Grand Canyon. I would love to go back!

[krimsonviper]

^RESIZE YOUR SIG WOMAN! You might also wanna delete your plate number.

That looks like fun! I need a vacation. I've never, ever had one in my 24 years of living.

[AZ89two4Tsx]

I'm definitely gonna need to make the trip up there. It's been almost 6 years since I moved here and I've never been, lol.

I wanna try to go within a month or so before it gets too hot.

[numbnuts240]

orly?