Our Trip to the Grand Canyon

At the beginning of the year I chose my ‘one-word-resolution’ to be wonder. I knew if that was going to be my one word, then we just HAD to take a trip this year to see something that would fill us with exactly that. So we packed our bags this Spring Break and headed to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon.

When I plan trips, I enjoy dog-earring, highlighting, and making notes in a paperback book. I found this Fodor’s travel book and started planning to visit the South Rim of the Canyon since the North Rim is closed in March due to snow. We packed for wearing layers because we planned to fly into Phoenix and drive through the mountains in Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon which was expected to also have some snow. To get the kids excited, I bought this Where Is the Grand Canyon? book and we learned a little history of the area – like the part about the how the Grand Canyon was explored by a one armed explorer! 

We visited several sites along our journey from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon. You can use this list to jump to a specific place in this post or feel free to read straight through about our four day trip through Arizona!

• Sedona 
• Slide Rock Park
• Meteor Crater
• Winslow, Arizona
• Walnut Canyon 
• Lowell Observatory
• Grand Canyon
• Bearizona

Sedona 

Day 1: It was incredible for these Texans to see the giant Saguaro cactus outside of Phoenix. They can grow up to 40 feet and live to 150 years old! After an hour or so we noticed the terrain becoming redder as we got closer to Sedona and it’s beautiful rock buttes. We stretched our legs at Bell Rock – a popular butte – and took an easy one mile hike to the base while enjoying the view of Sedona. 

Slide Rock State Park

Day 1: Our next stop was Slide Rock State Park. This is where we started to see snow as our elevation climbed. Interestingly, this park used to be an early 20th century apple orchard with an elaborate irrigation system to water the orchard. Now it is a great place to visit while driving through Oak Creek Canyon – especially during the summer months – to slide down a natural rock slides. But since it was so cold we did a few easy hikes up and down the creek and marveled how it was fed with melted snow! 

 

We ended our first day at Flagstaff and made a snowman marveling at how we were driving through the desert in the morning and that night playing in the snow.

Meteor Crater

Day 2: We started our second day visiting this crater that formed 50,000 years ago. It is the “best preserved and first proven” example of a large impact crater. It’s hard to fathom the size of this crater just from this picture.  It is estimated that the meteor was travelling at 26,000 mph with the same force as a 5 Megaton bomb during impact!

For comparison, the crater can hold 20 football fields! It is 1 mile across and 600 feet deep. At the bottom of the crater is a statue of a 6 foot tall astronaut and you can barely even make him out without binoculars (which I highly recommend you bring along for this trip!) The bottom of the crater was used for astronaut training but is now closed off to visitors.

Interestingly, the rocks on the rim of the crater are different than the rocks on the surface just outside the crater because of reverse stratigraphy. This means the layers of rock literally got turned upside down after impact!

This is the largest chunk of the meteorite that was found near the site – most of it was obliterated during impact. It is 92% iron, 7% nickel, 0.5% cobalt, and 0.5% other trace elements and it is older 4.56 billion years old! You can also find a piece of this rock at Lowell Observatory that we visited later that day. We learned that a piece of meteorite compared to a piece of Earth rock is heavier because it is made of heavier elements. And under a microscope the Earth rocks in the crater were literally ‘shocked’ by the impact and completely changed their structure!

The kids completed a scavenger hunt activity book to get a free badge from Meteor Crater. My youngest’s favorite was the “Launch Pad” simulation that takes you into outer space to destroy an asteroid. This was a great place to practice hiking at heights and how windy it can be in Arizona!

Winslow, Arizona

Day 2: For lunch we drove a little further east to “The Corner of Winslow, Arizona”. We enjoyed a hamburger, singing along to the Eagles, and taking cheesy pictures before heading to our next destination. 

Walnut Canyon 

Day 2: Walnut Canyon was an incredible way to hike down to cliff dwellings that were built between 1080 and 1250 by the Sinagua people. It is accessible by descending down 240 stairs that starts at the visitor center. It was a bit strenuous on the way back up – but completely doable (thank goodness for the hamburger in Winslow!). We took our time since us Texans aren’t used to the 7000 foot elevation!😅

Much of what is Arizona was covered over in water so it’s incredible to find seashell fossils and limestone on our hikes. These cliff dwellings were made from carving out the limestone in the cliffside.

Lowell Observatory

Day 2: That evening we were lucky that the skies cleared enough for us to visit the Lowell Observatory and enjoy viewing the Pleiades, and stars in Ursa Major on a clear mountain sky. This observatory was built by Percival Lowell who became interested in Mars and dedicated to researching the planet in 1894. He was particularly interested in the canals he believed were irrigation systems on Mars.  The Lowell Observatory is where they discovered Pluto (which will always be a planet in my heart!) 

If I enter any place with a good quote, I know I’m going to like it. “You can observe a lot by watching…”

Guess where this meteorite came from? You guessed it, Meteor Crater. I love how everything always ties back around. 

This is the telescope that was used to discover Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh.

Even though it’s not considered a planet anymore – I love the fact that a young girl from England – Venetia Burney nominated the name Pluto. She suggested “Pluto” the god of the Underworld, was consistent with the tradition of naming planets after gods and goddesses. 

And who doesn’t love a time capsule containing Pluto discovery memorabilia? It will remain sealed until an orbiter lands on the surface of Pluto has been reached! I can’t wait!

Grand Canyon: South Rim “It’s more than an experience: it’s an emotion…”

Day 3:  On day three we finally saw the Grand Canyon! We entered the Grand Canyon South Rim from the East Entrance Station and drove down Desert View Drive.  The name “Grand” was coined by John Wesley Powell (the one-armed explorer I mentioned earlier) on an exploration down the Colorado River in 1869. I really could not do it justice to describe the Grand Canyon so instead I added our first view of it here from the Desert View Watchtower.

The canyon is 10 miles wide and a depth of 1 mile but there is really nothing that prepares you for your first view. I could have stayed in one spot and watched forever taking in the vastness. It really blew my mind. 

Many of the trails had caution signs because of ice and you definitely have to keep up with your littles while walking the rim, but I never felt in danger when we stayed along the paved trails. We spent our afternoon eating a picnic and exploring Desert View drive and parked at the Visitor Center and walked to the Yavapai Museum of Geology.

We enjoyed the seeing the topographic relief map of the canyon at the museum…

and looking at the Grand Canyon from the many windowed viewpoints inside the warm museum! 

Of course we had to stay to watch the sunset at Mather Point.

Day 4: The next day we got the kids moving early to head back to the canyon to catch the sunrise. It was cold but it was worth it.

At this point I needed to warm up with a cup of coffee and a little trip to the gift shop. This was a postcard that I just loved – again with a great quote – I will probably use it often to describe our experience there.

We then explored the western side of the Visitor Center along the Trail of Time. This is a paved path along the Rim with a very nice interactive 1.5 mile hike with signs and rock samples from different ages and depths of the Canyon.

My kiddos loved this part the most particularly because we learned about the age of the canyon and got to stop along the way to see some cool rocks. We learned that interestingly enough, the layers of rock that the dinosaurs walked on has been completely eroded away! 

Here’s the oldest rock found in the canyon at a whopping 1.8 billion years old!

At the end of our adventure, the kids were sworn in as South Rim Grand Canyon Junior Rangers! 

We saw one elk while at the Grand Canyon. Throw in a few squirrels and a lot of giant ravens we saw very little wildlife. So we were even more excited to leave the Grand Canyon to check out our next and last stop…

Bearizona

Day 4: Bearizona is a drive-through wildlife park. I was a bit skeptical that animals would be active in the cold temperatures, but they were! At the end of the drive-through there was a walk through that we enjoyed before the rain set in. Overall we saw grizzly bears, white bison, arctic wolves, and it was an incredibly fun way to end our trip to Arizona.

The trip really was Grand and worth all the driving and walking that we did to explore the canyon. We hope it inspires you too to check this one off your travel bucket list.

Oh, and were we filled with wonder? We were indeed…