This summer, we took a 2-week family vacation out to the wild, wild west. Our adventure started with a 4-day, 1,500 mile drive from Tennessee to Northern Arizona. To read about our journey west, check out this previous post:
2016 Wild West Adventure - the Journey West
After our days-long drive to Arizona, we were ready for 5 packed days of the American Southwest.
Day 5
After 4 days of driving and early mornings, everyone wanted a chance to sleep in and relax a little before we started exploring.
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| While everyone else was enjoying the late morning, I got up a little early to take care of the dog, have some quiet time to myself, and then finish setting up our home away from home for the next 5 days. |
The
Williams/Circle Pines KOA is a really nice campground with a trailer-load of amenities. In my opinion, it is probably the nicest "destination" campground in the Grand Canyon Area - much nicer than any of the other campgrounds we saw. The campground is a short drive from Williams, AZ which has a Safeway grocery store and numerous restaurants and cafes. The drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon takes just over an hour. The campground has free cable TV and unlimited Wi-fi connectivity, along with a go cart track, miniature golf, hiking trails, indoor pool, weekly hay rides, and a large campground store.
After a leisurely start to the day and a quick bite of lunch, we decided to start our adventure at the Grand Canyon.
Fees to enter
Grand Canyon National Park are $30 per vehicle, and the pass is good for 7 days. After entering the park, we found a parking spot around the South Rim visitor center. At the visitor center, we watched a quick film on the history of the park, and then headed toward Mather Point. After a short walk up the trail, we reached the canyon rim... and there it was in all it's glory...
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| No lens on any camera can capture the vastness of the canyon. The view is all-consuming. Even this panorama shot doesn't even come close to giving justice to the awesome beauty. |
The entire time we were at the canyon, we kept having to dodge rain storms. It would clear up - then off in the distance, we would see an approaching storm. It would get really windy, and then downpour... with really large rain drops.
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| Another approaching storm |
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| In between the downpours and the strong winds, I managed to get my tripod set up and take a quick family photo. This was taken out on Mather Point. |
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| Panorama shot of an approaching storm with spots of sunlight shining into the canyon. |
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| As the storms passed over and the sun broke through the clouds, interesting patterns of dark and light would appear throughout the canyon. |
As we walked west along the rim trail, Aaron and I decided to take our adventure up a notch and climb out onto a precipice that jutted out from the canyon wall. We found a path that worked its way out onto the rocky ledge.
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| You can't really tell from my vantage point - but this is a picture of Aaron out on the edge of the precipice. It would have looked much more impressive if I had taken the picture from a further distance away. |
After taking cover from another downpour, we hopped on a shuttle bus to Grand Canyon Village for a quick bite to eat - then grabbed another shuttle back to the Visitor's Center and headed back to Williams and the campground. Despite the rain, the Grand Canyon did not disappoint.
Day 6
For something fun and memorable, I reserved spots for us on a 1.5 hour horseback ride with
High Mountain Trail Rides in Mormon Lake, AZ. We were scheduled for a 1:15 ride to
Navajo Springs. Mormon Lake was about a 1 hour drive from the campground, so we had another relaxing morning, packed a brown-bag lunch for everyone, then headed out around noon.
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| After arriving at the stables and getting checked-in, we were assigned our horses. Haley was on Snowball, Lea was on Jimmy, I was on Jack, and Aaron brought up the rear on Sally. |
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| The weather was beautiful, and we had a enjoyable ride through the Ponderosa Pines and Aspen groves. We had a great laugh when Haley's horse Snowball decided to relieve herself right in front of Lea. First came the waterfall, as she emptied her bladder. Then Snowball lifted her tail and detonated a huge gas bomb right in Lea's face. Lea's reaction was priceless. If only I had it on video. |
After our horseback ride, we decided to head out to the
Meteor Crater between Flagstaff and Winslow, AZ - another hour drive.
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| Looking toward Flagstaff from atop the crater wall. |
The meteor crater is a privately-owned site, so admission fees are a little high ($18.00 per adult), but it is pretty interesting. There is a visitor center with gift shop and museum - plus access to the crater rim.
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| Aaron and Haley on one of the lookout spots within the crater. The fixed telescopes focus on places of interest that are hard to spot with the naked eye. |
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| The crater itself is huge. Even standing on the rim, it's hard to judge how large it is. Down in the middle of the crater is a 6-foot cut-out of an astronaut that is hard to even see without a telescope. This is my attempt to get the entire crater in one panoramic shot. |
After we saw everything worth seeing at the meteor crater site, it was getting pretty late in the afternoon and we needed to get back to camp to feed the dog. So we took a quick side trip along historic Route 66 through downtown Flagstaff and headed back "home" for the evening.
Day 7
Next on the vacation agenda was a trip out to Hoover Dam. I've seen pictures, videos, and documentaries of the dam all my life and have always wanted to see it. With it being only a 2.5 hour drive away, I couldn't resist.
Since we would be driving a good part of the day and wanted to have enough time to tour the dam, we grabbed a quick breakfast and headed west on I-40.
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| After a couple hours of driving, we entered the Mojave Desert and eventually crossed the Colorado River into Nevada. Along the access road to the dam, there is a parking lot with a trail that leads up to the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge that spans Boulder Canyon. |
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| As we walked across the bridge, there in front of us was Hoover Dam in all her glory. The dam, built in the 1930's, is solid concrete - and isn't going anywhere. It's pretty astounding to think of how much forethought and effort went into building this engineering wonder with antiquated 30's-era tools and methodologies. |
Once we had enough of the view from the bridge, we walked back to the truck and drove to the dam. Once we passed through security, we crossed over the dam and parked the truck on the Arizona side of Lake Mead.
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| As we walked along Lake Mead toward the dam, we passed by the inlets for the hydro-electric turbines and the overflow spillway. The spires in the picture above take in water that power the turbines, providing electricity to Las Vegas and the surrounding area. There are 2 overflow spillways (the Nevada-side spillway is the large concrete wall just behind the intake spires). The only time Lake Mead has ever gotten high enough to need the spillway was in the 80s (during the Reagan administration) after a very snowy winter. |
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| This is a view of the dam from the Arizona side, looking toward the visitor center. |
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| A view of the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, looking South from Hoover Dam. |
I was pretty hot outside. Temperatures were around 115 degrees! While it was a "dry heat" with no humidity, it was still hot - basically like being inside an oven. To get respite from the high temps and glaring sun, we decided to go on the tour of the Hoover Dam power plant.
After watching a short movie on the history of the dam. we loaded into an elevator and descended several hundred feet into the rocky walls of Boulder Canyon to the hydro-electric power plant on the Nevada side of the dam.
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| After traversing down a long tunnel that was bored into the red rock, we entered the turbine room. These massive turbines, built in the 1930s, are rotated by the force of the Colorado River, generating the electricity that brings life to the Vegas strip. |
After our power plant tour was over, we were able to spend a few minutes on the observation deck.
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| This is looking down onto the top of the turbine rooms from the observation deck. We were in the Nevada turbine room (bottom of the picture). |
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| To finish up our day at Hoover Dam, we made an obligatory stop at the gift shop. Just outside the gift shop is a sculpture crafted in honor of the workers that risked their lives building the dam. This statue of a high scaler was modeled after an actual worker. |
Because of the unbearably hot temperature, Lea didn't want to make the long walk back to the truck, so Haley, Aaron, and I braved the hot temps while Lea took it easy in the air-conditioned gift shop. After picking her up on the way out, we headed back to camp.
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| On the way back to the campground, we discovered an In-N-Out along I-40 in Kingman, Arizona. Since neither Haley, Aaron, nor I have ever had the honor of eating In-N-Out, we decided to stop there for a late lunch - just to see what the craze is all about. The food was good (sorry California natives), but I have had better. However, I did not know about ordering "animal style." If I ever have the chance to eat at In-N-Out again, I'll try an animal style burger - that may change my mind. |
After nearly 5 total hours of driving and few hot hours at Hoover Dam, we ended our day with a relaxing evening in the camper.
Day 8
Because of all the driving over the past few days, we decided to spend Saturday morning close by. The plan was to head into nearby Williams, Arizona to find a cafe for breakfast, and then head back to the Grand Canyon that afternoon to catch the sunset at the end of the day.
After a slow-paced beginning to our morning we headed into Williams to have breakfast at
Cafe 326, right on historic Route 66. The food was pretty good and so was the coffee.
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| This sign was right outside the door of Cafe 326. |
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| After breakfast, we decided to "cruise" up and down Main street/Route 66 and hit some of the gift shops. Williams, Arizona is an interesting mix of Route 66 memorabilia and Old West-style attractions. One evening, when we were doing some grocery shopping, there was an old west "shoot-out" right on main street. |
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| This is an old Route 66 era garage-turned museum, right along the strip. |
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| A 1950 Ford parked at Pete's Gas Station Museum |
In past camping excursions, I have brought along a couple of bicycles - because that was all that would fit in the back of my truck. On this trip, I wanted to be able to bring 4 bikes along, so that we could all ride together as a family. A few months before we embarked on our adventure, I bought a mounting rack for our trailer and a 4-bike rack to carry all of our bikes. After toting 4 bike across the country, I wasn't about to leave Arizona without going on a family bike ride. So that afternoon, I hitched the bike rack to the truck and loaded all our bikes for a family bike-riding adventure along the Grand Canyon.
Most of the rim trail is off limits to bicycles, but there is a short section that goes West from the visitors center to the Kaibab Trailhead that is open to bikes. We parked the truck at the visitor center, unloaded the bikes, and headed down the greenway to the trail.
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| A view of the canyon where the greenway meets up with the rim trail. |
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| Aaron enjoying the view. |
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| Haley being Haley. |
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| Lea getting a little nervous being that close to the edge. |
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| The canyon near the trailhead of the Kaibab Trail. The Kaibab is one of the trails hikers take from the South Rim, down to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. |
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| Cactus at the Kaibab trailhead. |
Once we reached the Kaibab trailhead, we locked up our bikes and hopped on a shuttle bus to Yaki Point to catch the sunset.
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| The setting sun casts long shadows across the canyon. |
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| The family (sans bicycle helmets) at Yaki Point. |
After taking in some of the scenery, we found a Westward facing vantage on the point and settled down for the awesome display of God's artistry.
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| Enjoying the sunset (photo credit: Aaron Hicks) |
Once the sun set below the horizon, it started getting dark pretty quickly - and we still had to bike our way back to the truck. We hopped on the first shuttle bus off the point and got off at the closest stop to our bikes. We then hoofed it as fast as we could to our bikes, hopped on, and began riding our bikes back to the truck. Pretty soon, it was completely dark. We could barely make out the dark asphalt bike trail from the rest of the terrain. Our relaxing bike ride had now become an adrenaline-pumping adventure as we rode along the edge of the canyon in the blackness of night. Thankfully we all made it back to the truck safely. Now we have memories to share and a great story to tell.
Once we loaded the bikes on the bike rack, we discovered that a night-time star tour was about to embark from the Grand Canyon Visitor Center. The Grand Canyon was recently designated as a
dark sky park. At night, the park is almost completely free of light pollution and offers an incredible view of the stars and planets in our galaxy - even the Milky Way Galaxy itself. I didn't have enough time to take any long-exposure photos of the night sky, so you will just have to take my word for it: the view of the stars was absolutely amazing.
The star party tour wrapped up around 10:00pm, and we headed back to camp to wrap up our penultimate day in Arizona.
Day 9
Day 9 marked our last day in Arizona. We spent that morning doing a few chores (like laundry) and getting ready for our departure. That afternoon, we had a trip planned down to Prescott, Arizona to visit some old family friends.
One of Lea's dad's best friends is Dave Grossman. For years, Dave has been a collector of sorts, a motorcycle enthusiast, and a classic car restorer. Several years ago, he "retired" to Prescott. Since we were in Arizona, and only an hour or so from Prescott, we decided to pay him a visit.
When we arrived at Dave's place, he met us outside and quickly took us on a tour of his garage where he keeps his collection. After going through his garage, he took us outside to show us some of his cars. Aaron is a huge car fan and took lots of pictures. Since I didn't bring my camera, here are some of Aaron's:
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| Dave showing off his Chevy Super Sport. |
After checking out all his cars, we went inside to visit for a while, then headed back to camp to finish packing up the trailer for our long trip the next morning.
Northern Arizona is an amazing place. We spend 5 full days there, and didn't even come close to seeing all the sights. We'll just say that we left plenty to do for our next trip west, whenever that may come.
That's it for our Wild West Arizona adventure. Next up, a few days in Albuquerque,
New Mexico and the long journey home.
