Tag Archives: Arizona

Grand Canyon

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It was almost the same situation as last July.  Then we were in NE Pennsylvania and Roxie wondered how far it was to Niagara Falls.  The philosophy was, since we were so close we might as well go!

That was how it was leaving Prescott.  We were so close to the Grand Canyon we might as well go!

The last time we were at the Grand Canyon was in 1999.  We had our two kids with us (10 and 16) and our SOB (24′ Nomad).  We had some big problems with our door latch on the trailer.  One morning Roxie and I woke up with the front door wide open!  We had another time where we could not get INTO the trailer.  Our son had to enter through the emergency window to open the door.  We also had refrigerator problems and found our ice cream melted!

This time, however, we could not get a spot around the south rim.  We stayed at a KOA in Williams:

This KOA reminded me a lot of the one my parent’s owned in Redding.  I remembered working there, showing campers their spot with the golf cart.  Also, the owners of this KOA were part of the family that my parents knew from Chula Vista.

The first day we were there we drove up to the canyon.  The Grand Canyon is misnamed in my opinion but what other superlative would you use?  Fantastic Canyon, Tremendous Canyon, Huge Canyon?  The weather turned out to be very nice and we did a bit of walking and took some shuttles.  We also took some photos:

One thing that I found walking around was this:

It appears that years ago they ran a phone line across the canyon.  You can see one of the poles just a bit down the canyon.

The next day we took the train up to the canyon.  It was an experience that we thought we would do this time.  The trip up was enjoyable but they sure do go slow!  We were able to walk a different part of the canyon.  We even toyed with the idea of coming up the third day and walking down the canyon a bit on this trail:

We took the slow train back and got in the kid’s car with a very talkative train employee which made it seem even slower.

The first day we also researched some NFS locations to boondock for free that were very close to the park.  We thought that would be a good place to stay for the third day.  However, Roxie fell each day that we were there so she did not feel up to walking around much more.  She was having one of her bad days…

Off to the next stop, trying to avoid the heat!

Prescott

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We had known about Prescott for quite a few years.  My mother just lives about 60 miles south and we have driven through it a couple of times, stopping for something to eat.  We also know a ‘resident’ of Prescott, Rich C.  We met Rich years ago (2006) at the International WBCCI rally in Salem OR and we have kept in contact ever since.  We also knew that he liked to stay in a campground called Point of Rocks.

Now that the refrigerator was fixed we determined to go to Prescott for a week or more.  We were even able to secure a spot at Point of Rocks and it backed up to the rock formation called the Dells.

We knew that Roxie had to get an eye doctor appointment here so that is why we were in for a week.   It actually turned out to be 9 nights but we were OK with that.

One of the nice things about the campground is two trails take off that go to Watson Lake.  They are relatively easy trails so we did them both while we were there:

Above is a view of Watson Lake from one of the trails.

While we were there we did the traveling things you need to do, laundry, Costco, see movies, try local restaurants, groceries, etc.  That pretty much took up our other time.  We were also there on Easter Sunday and in the park by the lake a local church was having an outdoor service.  We took the foldup rocking chairs and hiked the trail to the park.

Above they gave the kids balloons and tried to get them to release them at the same time (do you need a permit for that?).

Roxie got a clean bill of health from the eye exam and it was starting to warm up so we decided to move on.  Roxie asked me how close were we to the Grand Canyon.  That was a hint as to where she wanted to go next…