Joyride with the Joneses
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Grand Canyon National Park
Visited: June 2016
Duration: 1 full day
Accommodations: Thunderbird Lodge (I do not recommend)
We spent a full day here at the park on the South Rim. We started off with an overpriced breakfast at Bright Angel Lodge. We walked the rim trail in the morning stopping at the Visitor center for Junior Rangers and cancellations. Everywhere we went was absolutely packed with people and tourist shops. Not what I expected at all after visiting Arches, Bryce and Zion. We stopped and got some great pictures of the canyon along the rim trail.
We went to El Tovar for lunch and ran down to the General store to fill up on food for the rest of our trip. A little shopping in the afternoon at the Grand Canyon village shops and the kids are ready for naps.
After our naps, we headed down to Shrine of the Ages for our evening ranger program called Twilight Zone. We did everything in the dark, learning to use our other senses because we couldn’t use our eyes. We also learned how some living things fluoresce and we pretended to be able to fluoresce using gum, pretty cool trick I didn’t know. This was a great program put on by Ranger Andy, I would recommend this if you have Junior Rangers earning their badges, this is one of the programs you complete to earn it. Even the adults LOVED it in our group. We had a dark and spooky walk back along the rim trail to our hotel. It didn’t help my kids were hiding in the timber making cougar and mountain lion sounds. We didn’t know grandma could walk that fast!! LOL.
In the morning we visited Vercamp’s Visitor Center to receive our Junior Ranger badges and we were off to Four Corners Monument.
We didn’t spend long at the Grand Canyon, too many people and really not much to do, that we could find. It was gorgeous, but I think I would rather spend my time at the North Rim or Havasupai, a little less crowded and a lot less touristy. Have you been to the Grand Canyon? What did you think? It really wasn’t one of our favorites. Maybe we will try it again some day.
Joyride with the Joneses 
I’m in complete agreement here about how the Grand Canyon isn’t one of our favourite national parks we’ve been too either. Don’t get me wrong, the views are jaw dropping. But you’re right, besides the views, there really aren’t many hiking opportunities or other activities to partake in. I’m glad we’ve seen it in real life and that was an incredible experience, but there isn’t a whole lot to do in this national park. At least when we visited it was in December and the weather was much cooler (we actually had a snowstorm while we camped here overnight) and there were hardly any crowds.
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