swalker
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- Joined
- Dec 11, 2014
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- 07/2014
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I am finally getting around to starting a thread about our trip to Grand Canyon National Park last fall.
As always, it was a wonderful trip in a magnificent park. It was a bit more exciting because of our new-to-us motorhome and the weather.
The Grand Canyon is a very popular place and it is necessary to book well in advance. Some of the more popular places require entering a lottery.
Early last year my wife entered the lottery for a space a Phantom Ranch, a rustic camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. She "won" the lottery and was able to secure accomodations for three people. She invited two good friends to accompany her. Unfortunately, that meant we would also need to coordinate a place for me and the motorhome while I stayed on the canyon rim. The trip to Phantom Ranch requires hiking down to the bottom of the canyon on one of several trails. You can also take a mule ride down for a fee. Obviously, I was not going to hike or ride a mule to Phantom Ranch. This was a trip for Lori and her friends.
In the past, we had camped at the Mather campground on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I first stayed at that campground in 1978 and have been there many times since. Unfortunately, our motorhome is too large to fit into any site in that campground, so we had to make other arrangements.
Not far from Mather Campground is Trailer Village. Trailer Village is setup up to handle motorhomes like ours. By scheduling the trip well in advance we were able to reserve a week in Trailer Village that covered the 3 days that Lori would be hiking with her friends in the canyon.
So, with that preliminary, you will see that our timeframe was pretty well fixed. We could not change it without giving up the reservation at Phantom Ranch and probably at Trailer Village as well.
The only reservations we could get would force us to have the Grand Canyon trip one week after we concluded our trip to Yellowstone. We rationalized that one week was enough. One week is not enough, but I am willing to talk myself into just about anything for a good cause!
If you have read about our Yellowstone trip, you already know that returning home from that trip was delayed by issues with the weather and motorhome. But we did make it home finally. Unfortunately, we had to leave for the Grand Canyon 5 days after returning home from Yellowstone. I really need a week or more to recover from that kind of trip.
I thought very seriously about staying home and just having Lori go without me (she would have stayed in a hotel, probably 75 miles away from the Grand Canyon in Flagstaff, Arizona). In the end, I decided that I would try it and see what happend.
So, "we" got home from Yellowstone, unloaded the motorhome, got it prepped for the trip to Arizona, and headed out.
We usually take 2 days to do the 10 hour drive to the Grand Canyon. We decided to spend the night at an RV park in Moab, Utah. Moab is a spectacular place worth a week long trip itself. We are very new to staying in RV parks, having only done so once before. We managed to get there and get set up. I went to bed early!
The next day, we both slept in late. We packed up (which was more exciting than it sounds because we are new to packing a motorhome) and drove to the Grand Canyon. We had an hour delay for road construction, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. We drove through Monument Valley on a narrow road, but the views were worth the hassles of driving the motorhome over a narrow road.
We arrived at Trailer Village in the Grand Canyon and were assigned our spot. When we pulled into it, we found that it was too steep to level the motorhome! So, Lori went back to the office and asked (pleaded) for a more level spot. It was late in the day and there was only one other suitable spot that had not yet been occupied (the folks had not yet arrived). They gave it to us and fortunately we were able to level the motorhome there OK.
I slept very well that night -- and for a very long time!
I was so excited about being there I did not think to take any pictures of our campsite. So you will just have to trust me that it was a lot like being in a mobile home park. There was a herringbone pattern of parking spots with 100% occupancy.
I will close off this post with a picture of the canyon from Pima Point. It is one of my favorite places to spend watching the sunset. I will post more a bit later.
Steve
As always, it was a wonderful trip in a magnificent park. It was a bit more exciting because of our new-to-us motorhome and the weather.
The Grand Canyon is a very popular place and it is necessary to book well in advance. Some of the more popular places require entering a lottery.
Early last year my wife entered the lottery for a space a Phantom Ranch, a rustic camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. She "won" the lottery and was able to secure accomodations for three people. She invited two good friends to accompany her. Unfortunately, that meant we would also need to coordinate a place for me and the motorhome while I stayed on the canyon rim. The trip to Phantom Ranch requires hiking down to the bottom of the canyon on one of several trails. You can also take a mule ride down for a fee. Obviously, I was not going to hike or ride a mule to Phantom Ranch. This was a trip for Lori and her friends.
In the past, we had camped at the Mather campground on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I first stayed at that campground in 1978 and have been there many times since. Unfortunately, our motorhome is too large to fit into any site in that campground, so we had to make other arrangements.
Not far from Mather Campground is Trailer Village. Trailer Village is setup up to handle motorhomes like ours. By scheduling the trip well in advance we were able to reserve a week in Trailer Village that covered the 3 days that Lori would be hiking with her friends in the canyon.
So, with that preliminary, you will see that our timeframe was pretty well fixed. We could not change it without giving up the reservation at Phantom Ranch and probably at Trailer Village as well.
The only reservations we could get would force us to have the Grand Canyon trip one week after we concluded our trip to Yellowstone. We rationalized that one week was enough. One week is not enough, but I am willing to talk myself into just about anything for a good cause!
If you have read about our Yellowstone trip, you already know that returning home from that trip was delayed by issues with the weather and motorhome. But we did make it home finally. Unfortunately, we had to leave for the Grand Canyon 5 days after returning home from Yellowstone. I really need a week or more to recover from that kind of trip.
I thought very seriously about staying home and just having Lori go without me (she would have stayed in a hotel, probably 75 miles away from the Grand Canyon in Flagstaff, Arizona). In the end, I decided that I would try it and see what happend.
So, "we" got home from Yellowstone, unloaded the motorhome, got it prepped for the trip to Arizona, and headed out.
We usually take 2 days to do the 10 hour drive to the Grand Canyon. We decided to spend the night at an RV park in Moab, Utah. Moab is a spectacular place worth a week long trip itself. We are very new to staying in RV parks, having only done so once before. We managed to get there and get set up. I went to bed early!
The next day, we both slept in late. We packed up (which was more exciting than it sounds because we are new to packing a motorhome) and drove to the Grand Canyon. We had an hour delay for road construction, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. We drove through Monument Valley on a narrow road, but the views were worth the hassles of driving the motorhome over a narrow road.
We arrived at Trailer Village in the Grand Canyon and were assigned our spot. When we pulled into it, we found that it was too steep to level the motorhome! So, Lori went back to the office and asked (pleaded) for a more level spot. It was late in the day and there was only one other suitable spot that had not yet been occupied (the folks had not yet arrived). They gave it to us and fortunately we were able to level the motorhome there OK.
I slept very well that night -- and for a very long time!
I was so excited about being there I did not think to take any pictures of our campsite. So you will just have to trust me that it was a lot like being in a mobile home park. There was a herringbone pattern of parking spots with 100% occupancy.
I will close off this post with a picture of the canyon from Pima Point. It is one of my favorite places to spend watching the sunset. I will post more a bit later.
Steve
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