The Grand Canyon

Day 13

Griffith Park and Observatory, Drive to Grand Canyon, Route 66.

Before we left Los Angeles for the Grand Canyon; we promised ourselves we would revisit the Griffith observatory for daylight views.

And it did not disappoint. This was yet another extraordinary view to say goodbye to our home for the last five days.

We then hit the road towards Arizona. This would be our longest drive of the trip, at about eight hours.

We broke it up by stopping at a few places – Barstow and Kingsman. I also had my first experience at driving the car as it was basically hundreds of miles down a straight road.

A lot of this route ran across the historic Route 66 but we opted for the quicker route along the interstate road 40. We did hit the old road a couple of times when we made a stop!

Eventually, just around dusk, we arrived at The Grand Canyon national park.

From there, we checked in to our room at Yavapai lodge. It was very rural (obviously!) with wildlife (mostly elk) wondering around and a great campfire vibe.

We checked in, had some food at the lodge, warmed up by the fire and headed to bed.

Day 14

The Grand Canyon, The Visitor Centre, orange and red scenic routes, sunset.

The next morning we walked to the visitor centre to get more information and walked a little further to get our first view of the wonder that is The Grand Canyon.

We were staying near the South Rim, which even covering the miles we did, took us most of the day and we chose limited options as we only had a day!

It’s hard to explain the scale and magnitude of the canyon, but seeing a few different views of it along both east and west routes on the shuttle buses were really special.

We walked most of the orange route ourselves, then after lunch back at the lodge dining hall, we took the shuttle towards the other side on the red route.

To finish the tour, we walked some of the Bright Angel trail which takes you all the way down to the Colorado river if you were to keep walking. But it’s a long way! Still, it was cool to travel a little way down into the rocks.

Finally, we parked up at Yavapai point and found a spot to watch sunset. This was really beautiful and allowed us to see more shapes and shadows within the canyon. You really have to see it to get a better idea of what we mean! Staying right till the sun set behind the canyon was amazing as the colours light up the skyline with pastel colours.