The Grand Canyon is easily Arizona’s most distinguishable landmark. At 277 miles long, as much as 18 miles wide and a full mile deep, it’s the second largest canyon in the world (the largest is Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet). The Grand Canyon’s walls contain rock layers that are up to 1.8 billion years old.
We stayed exclusively at the South Rim in the Grand Canyon, which is open year-round and is the busiest and most frequented area by visitors, as it’s also the most accessible and has the most amenities such as accommodation, tours, transportation, etc. The North Rim is more remote–due to its higher elevation it’s a lot cooler and only open between around mid-May to mid-October. Meanwhile, Michael and I visited the West Rim years ago, which has a lot of activities that are outside of that Park on Hualapai Tribal Land, including the Skywalk (a horseshoe-shaped glass bridge cantilevered 70 feet over the Grand Canyon), riding rapids, soaring in a zipline, and learning about tribal culture in Eagle Point’s authentic village. We were fortunate years ago to take a helicopter ride into the canyon when we went to the West Rim (as well as a small plane ride to/from Vegas to get there that also flew over Hoover Dam, which was a splurge, but definitely a fun and memorable experience!
Our First Morning Surprise: Elk!
But we digress… Going back to our first full day in the Grand Canyon, we had the incredible surprise of stepping outside of our RV to find about a dozen elk wandering around in our campsite! They were all very relaxed and not the least bit intimidated by the RVs, tents, and people milling about, and ambled along to leisurely munch on leaves. Sheila appeared to be way more curious about the elk (a new animal for her to spot), and she didn’t seem to know what to make out of the experience!
We were also happy to learn that there are dedicated bike trails around the South Rim, so we strapped Sheila back into her dog trailer to ride toward Yaki Point, which is the only scenic viewpoint that isn’t accessible by cars. We were enjoying our ride along the scenic trail, catching more in-depth glimpses at times of the canyon and the gorges below. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Michael’s pedal fell off, so we headed back to our campsite to fix it. It seems that it hadn’t been properly pushed in, which meant that the tread on the pedal had worn out, so Michael ended up finding some MacGyver-like ways to bash it back in.
After making a filling Mediterranean chickpea salad for lunch, we were off to ride again, this time with a warm and content belly full of food… Only for Michael’s battery on his eBikes to stall! By this time, an icy and strong wind had started to blow, so we aimed to get back to our campsite as quickly as possible. We say “aimed” because we swapped eBike batteries since Michael had the additional weight of riding with Sheila’s dog trailer attached, and we made good time until Lisette had to ride the last bit uphill to the campsite, and her little legs struggled to push the pedals uphill–a jogger probably would have easily overtaken her at that stage!!
As the temperatures dropped in the evening, it was the perfect time to make a comforting meal. Lisette loves to cook–she’ll spend time each week reading through new recipes from food bloggers via social media or from their newsletters, will happily devote time to meal prep to make sure that random ingredients are used up, will eat food while reading about food, and is always eager to try new recipes. Tonight we used up some of the red lentils that had traveled with us from home to make this hearty Mediterranean lentil stew, which was a success! Lisette substituted soy sauce for the broth, and added one of our favorite hot sauces, Cholula, instead of using the fiery harissa. While Lisette does miss having her oven, it’s been wonderful to have a perfectly operating kitchen while we’re on the road.
Due to the snow covering our solar panels and the lack of direct sunlight, our batteries dropped quite a bit when it was snowing. Luckily we have a big enough battery bank to survive an extended time without sunlight.
Earlier that day, we’d met a family from London who were traveling around for about a year around the US, also spending a lot of time checking out many of the country’s national parks. The parents were homeschooling their two girls, and had previously also had a caravan to spend 18 months exploring Australia. This time, they had an epic expedition vehicle, which they’d customized and shipped from the UK (coincidentally it was the same one we spotted at Walnut Canyon - see the pic here).
For us, this current trip in an RV is a test to see how we’d handle it, but we’d love to have an expedition vehicle in the future to continue exploring countries across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. We were able to check out their expedition vehicle in detail and get a lot of tips and insights for us to reference for later. It’s wonderful to folks along the way who are like-minded in wanting to explore the world. Nobody ever lives wanting to have spent more time behind a computer working, that’s for sure!
Our Second Morning Surprise: Snow!
Remember earlier when we mentioned that our first surprise on our first full day in the Grand Canyon was seeing elk mill about our campsite? On the second day, our immediate surprise was waking up to see snow outside! The temperature had dropped dramatically the afternoon prior, and as we fell asleep we’d heard the sound of the wind and what sounded like rain pattering on our RV. Well…we thought it was rain, but it was snow, which Lisette noticed as she lifted the blinds to take her daily morning photo. She started a habit of taking a photo each morning of the view outside the window on her side of the bed, with the goal of stitching it up at the end of this trip (don’t tell Michael though–the photos are all in vertical mode, which he’s going to hate as someone that insists on horizontal snapshots!). This morning was probably the prettiest morning image of the trip so far!
Given the cold, snowy day, it seemed like the perfect morning to make pancakes. Lisette has been making pancakes for years using this recipe, but alas, in her haste to finish cooking she blasted the heat too high on the stove, so quite a few pancakes looked cooked on the outside, but were still raw in the middle. Now we know how to work this stove for future cooking endeavors!
We used a big chunk of the day to do errands, including spending money to have nice hot showers and doing laundry. It cost $2.50 for a 5 minute hot shower, but after having many consecutive days of the quick “splash and dash” showers in the tiny space in our RV, a 5 minute hot shower just letting the water run in a more generous space felt simply luxurious! It also cost $2.50 for the washing machine and dryer respectively, but these are the errands that simply need to be done while on the road once in a while.
In the late afternoon we checked out the Yavapai Museum of Geology, a free museum to learn more about the formation and composition of the canyon, which is also perched to have a spectacular view of the canyon itself. Heading back to our campsite, we took care to walk carefully that evening as the snow turned to slippery ice in sections of the road.
Route Map
