Travelling to the North Rim

First thing Thursday morning, the kids wanted to hit the pool at the Williams campground. We'd promised them an evening swim the night before, but the pool was unexpectedly closed due to the scattered thunderstorms in the area. (The indoor pool. And I was supposed to feel safe in my metal RV???)

So we let them swim and then fed them a nice hot breakfast before packing up and hitting the road once more. They look thrilled to document their time at the pool, don't they?





After bidding goodbye to Williams, we hit the road for what the GPS stated would be a three-hour or so drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. As the crow flies, it was probably about 80 miles, but we had to go all the way around that huge hole in the ground.

And we crawled, at points, through brief but dumping rain.

And we made a pit stop for ice cream and gas.

So it turned out to be more like five hours. But we weren't complaining.

We all agreed that this landscape looked just like Radiator Springs. Don't you just feel like you tumbled out of the back of Mack's truck?









Here is the view from the Vermilion Cliffs, which we climbed as we ascended to the North Rim area:



The pit stop in Jacob's Lake was at a funky little store that for whatever reason decided that it was time to decorate for Christmas.







We also happened to run into someone we knew while walking across the parking lot. One of the child care staff from the Avila Bay Club was pit-stopping as well; she was taking a break from a cross-country trek with friends. Crazy!

I snapped this one of the back of our RV before hopping back in. The kids' bikes have been HUGE on this trip:



As we approached the North Rim, we saw that the topography on this side of the canyon was much different from the opposite edge. With the dense, tall pines, it struck us as very much like Tahoe. (And indeed, our campground reinforced that feeling.)



We were a little nervous rolling into the campground because this spot had restrictions on the length of RVs allowed, and we knew that ours was a few feet in excess of that limit. I admit to actually crossing my fingers as we pulled up to the registration office, and maybe that worked. In any case, we were allowed in with no problem (and even saw a few RVs larger than ours scattered around the grounds).

Noah had been complaining of a stomach ache all day, but with the canyon so close -- just yards away -- and pretty evening light, we HAD to take a quick family walk along the nearby trail. I won't say that it was the most pleasant of our trip experiences, at least from a whining perspective, but in the end we all enjoyed the scenery.







Foxy actually asked to have this exact photo taken:





We also ended up at that Grand Canyon Lodge, a very cool spot with some unique vantage points and some darling cabins with incredible views.







See the observation spot jutting out in this shot?



Here's Evan at the same spot:



And the view looking back up at the Lodge:



We ended our hiking and observing with Shirley Temples on one of the Lodge's patios.



After that, we trekked back to the campground to fire up the generator during the tail end of the allowable two-hour window. The night's menu included cheeseburgers, broccoli and mac and cheese, followed by s'mores cooked over a stuttering fire. Wet firewood was the culprit; good thing Brian had a spare work document on hand to crumple and toss in to get things going!