Day 11 – Grand Canyon National Park – Part 1

Megan’s Take

Grand Canyon National Park is busier and more overwhelming than the other places we’ve been in terms of logistics, but of course, it’s beautiful! We started an early hike on the South Kaibab trail to Ooh Aah Point.

It was 0.9 miles down, which was fairly easy with the exception of some steep slippery gravel areas, but then 0.9 miles back up 685 feet.

Phil and I were both amazed that the kids did the hike all by themselves. We expected that Emilia would be able to do it with encouragement, but we brought the hiking carrier for Emmett, fully expecting to haul him back up out of the canyon. He didn’t need it! I kept the kids distracted with “guess the food/animal/color” games, and we walked slowly and took water/snack breaks. They were champs.

The kids were excited today about taking shuttle buses,

eating ice cream after lunch and again after dinner, playing with campground neighbor kids, and going to their first IMAX movie (Grand Canyon: Rivers of Time).

They also walked very far (maybe up to a mile) by hopping rock to rock on the rocks bordering a trail.

It kept them going and gave them an opportunity to practice their balancing.

Phil’s Take

The above shuttle bus ride was the first of that kind for both of the kids, and it may have been a motivating factor in getting Emmett to hike all the way back up without being carried. That and the snacks.

After finishing the hike to Ooh Aah Point, we took the shuttle over to Yaki Point, though I realized as we were leaving it that we missed the best view.

Once we returned to the visitor center, we caught the most famous view in the park at Mather Point.

It was quite crowded there, but we had more opportunities planned. We grabbed the stroller and headed west along the rim trail, catching some views along the way.

We visited the geological museum next, but didn’t really have time to enjoy it with the kids. I grabbed pics of the exhibits so Megan and I could read the details later, and you can too in the gallery at the bottom.

West of the museum was the start of the Trail of Time, which was an awesome commentary to follow on the 2 or so miles to the village.

I grabbed shots of the boards so we could go back like I did with the museum, since the kids were so busy jumping on the rocks the while way, as the videos show. They had samples of all the different kinds of rocks found in the canyon correlated to their dates along the path. We discovered a way to get Emmett to go faster was to point out that there was another one of these rocks ahead, because he’d run to it to touch it and forget about slowly stepping across the rocks.

Megan covered the rest, and you can see the details in the gallery below.