Road Trip [Pt. 4 - Grand Canyon National Park]
We finally come to the end of this 4 part blog series documenting my husband and I’s road trip! Our next stop after Page, AZ was the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The drive was pretty incredible from Page to the North Rim. It’s fun to see the landscape switch from desert to mountains. When deciding to go to the Grand Canyon, we went back and forth a lot about which rim, North or South. We’d heard great things about both. From what we heard, the South side tends to be more popular and more touristy. There’s more to do in the area (outside of the Grand Canyon) and it’s lower elevation so typically warmer. We heard the North side on the other hand was a bit quieter and more remote (and also probably colder), so that’s what we opted for. We stayed at the North Rim Campground, in the tent only section. We loved it!
The campsite wasn’t super private in terms of not being able to see neighbors at all, however we lucked out and didn’t have many neighbors, so it was nice to have most of the place to ourselves. The only neighbors we did have decided to hide in their cars most of the time because they were wimps in the cold. ;) We also had some canyon views from our site. What more could you ask for?
The afternoon that we arrived, we set up camp and drove over to the Lodge to do the short “hike” to Bright Angel Point. It was basically a paved walk to an overlook. It was around sunset and really pretty. After our hike, we walked around the lodge a bit and started to get a tad jealous of the lodge-stayers. Everyone looked so cozy with their drinks, sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs watching the sunset. We were a little envious that we had to go back to our campsite in the cold to make dinner ourselves.
That night was frigid. The wind was really strong and the temps were in the 20’s, so we did not last long before we were curled up in blankets in the tent. We had the right setup though, because we didn’t get cold once that night while we were sleeping!
The next morning after we breakfast, we decided to hike the Uncle Jim trail. It was a 4.7 mile trail with pretty views! It was nice to be in the sunshine, and the wind had died down a bit. We didn’t do any of the rim to rim hikes, or any of the hikes into the bottom of the canyon. That is something that I wish I had explored a bit more, but we’ll just have to save that for another trip!
After our morning hike, we had a picnic and a leisurely afternoon. We drove to another part of the North Rim that we hadn’t explored and stopped at overlooks/small hikes.
We learned from the previous day, and ended our 2nd day right: in rocking chairs, watching the sunset, with wine in hand. It was so relaxing! Followed by a cold, windless (!) evening at our campground.
The next day after breakfast and packing up, we headed to Flagstaff where we stayed for a night with my Uncle. We went on a little hike here, followed by some great pizza, and a low key night.
In the morning we hit the road for home and to pick up our pup!
Overall we had an 8 night trip, here’s a snapshot:
Zion - 3 nights
Bryce - 1 night (would definitely do longer next time!)
Page - 1 night
North Rim Grand Canyon - 2 nights
Flagstaff - 1 night
I’m ready to plan another road trip!