Spent the day at Zion before driving on to the Grand Canyon. I rose early and went to town to get coffee and an internet connection. Went though some of the trip photos and made my first upload to pbase. Brought coffee back to the camp for Kimberly, and cooked sausage and eggs for breakfast. The kids had already eaten cereal, and by the time we cleaned up and broke camp, including another stop by the river to throw stones (Ava and I dipped our heads in too), it was time to feed them lunch.

Back in town, hot dogs in hand, we stopped at a field where elk and longhorn cattle grazed almost up to the side of the road. It was a small family farm that encouraged visitors to stop and see (and feed) their animals. In addition to the longhorns and the elk, whose antlers were still small and covered in velvet, they had a longhorn calf, huge chickens, and two bison.
It was fairly late in the day by the time we caught the free shuttle up to the canyon. We stopped twice, at Big Bend and the Riverside walk to the Narrows. The canyon was spectacular, but we were disappointed that the mile plus walk to the Narrows didn’t actually get you to the Narrows, so we never saw them.

By the time we got back to the main road and Springdale, the kids (well, Jed) were pretty miserable from hunger and all the walking and bus riding. We stopped to eat and hit the road late. We stopped again shortly to see the grand arch? And wonder how the tunnel leading out of the canyon opened up sheer in the middle of the canyon wall. When we proceeded, we found the mouth of the tunnel was further down, and that while it had no lights and was almost pitch black, there were several point along it’s mile plus length that it had openings to the side, right in the middle of the cliff faces, such as we had seen from below. Unfortunately, there was no way to safely stop and take a look out them.
When we came out of the tunnel, it was beginning to get dark, but the country up above was stunning. It was smaller canyons and buttes, from the pale yellow “Navajo” sandstone that forms the upper part of the canyon.

We headed for the town of Page. Since we hadn’t had cell phone service since before Zion, we were unsure if we could find accommodation at the Grand Canyon, so we stopped at Page for petrol and a phone. We managed to book a room, and drove on, and it was well after midnight by the time we arrived at Yavapai Lodge at the Grand Canyon.