Name: The Ultimate Visitor Guide to the Grand Canyon - Everything You Need to Know
Uploaded: 2024-08-15T07:06:46.000Z
Duration: 28 min 8 s
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Hey there folks Scottsdale Travel Chick sidekick here to present our visitor guide on the Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona. In this video we'll show you everything you need to know about visiting the park like what to see and do, how to do it, where to stay, where to eat, and more. So sit back enjoy and take it all in. Here we go.

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First off let's start with just a bit of background on the park. The Grand Canyon is an overwhelming experience and nothing prepares a visitor for the site of such a massive gorge. What you see today is the result of almost seven million years of Colorado River erosion. The canyon is simply immense measuring over 250 miles long, one mile deep, and up to 18 miles across and it exposes some of the oldest rock on earth going back nearly two billion years into Earth's history. It's no wonder the Grand Canyon is known as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The canyon was first discovered by Europeans in 1540 when Spanish explorers were taken there by local Hopi Indian guides, but it wasn't until 1858, more than 300 years later, that the canyon was officially mapped. And a decade after that until John Wesley Powell made his famous expedition down the river. Soon after that though the Santa Fe Railroad built a railroad spur from Flagstaff Arizona to the canyon's south rim and early tourism efforts began. And finally in 1919, after two previous rejections by the US Congress, the Grand Canyon was finally designated a National Park. Today the canyon is one of the most visited parks in the country and a crown jewel of the National Park System. The park consists of land on both north and south rims of the canyon, but due to its accessibility advantage over the north rim, the south rim receives the vast majority of all tourism visits. For this reason our guide here will focus on all the opportunities and amenities the south rim has to offer. Now let's talk about the park's location, getting there, entry fees, and hours. The south rim park entrance is a one and a half hour drive from Flagstaff Arizona, a little more than a three and a half hour drive from

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Phoenix, or a four hour drive from Las Vegas, Nevada. There's a small private airport near the park, but the closest commercial airport is in Flagstaff, one and a half hours away. The south rim park entrance is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the National Park entrance fee is $35 a vehicle, which should be noted is good for a total of seven days. In terms of when to visit, one can visit the south rim any time of the year and see the same immense beautiful grandeur, and many people do, with almost six million visitors in peak years. But the best times for ideal weather tend to be late spring and late fall. Summers can be very hot and winters can be very cold. Other than winter season, when you might feel like you have the park to yourself, you should expect lots of other visitors, hotels to be booked, and most prime sites to be very crowded. Now let's talk about the lodging and dining choices you have in and around the park. There are a surprising amount of options within the park itself. El Tavar is a National

Historic Landmark and the finest accommodation on the south rim. It offers an ideal location directly on the rim with a dining room bar and about 78 rooms and suites. Bright Angel Lodge is nearby and also on the rim. Built in 1935, this basic and rustic option offers various cabins and lodge rooms, along with a couple of dining options on site. Kachina Lodge and Thunderbird Lodge are also on the rim and were built in the 1960s. These lodges are less rustic and very similar, offering family-friendly rooms and some with partial canyon views.

Maswick Lodge is located about a quarter mile off the rim in a wooded area and has some larger rooms great for families. Both north and south sections are open year-round with cabin rooms open in the summer. Yavapai Lodge is set back further about one mile from the rim in a wooded area and has about 350 rooms separated into east and west sections. Kings, doubles, and bunk bedrooms are available. If you'd like to see a review for the Yavapai Lodge, check out our dedicated hotel review. Just search Scottsdale Travel Chick Yavapai Lodge.

Beyond the serviced lodges in the park, there are two camping options called

Mathers Campground and Trailer Village. Both are set off from the rim in wooded areas. Lastly, Phantom Ranch is another lodging option at the very bottom of the canyon. It's the only lodging below the rim and it's accessible only by foot, mule, or raft. It's made up of cabins and dormitories segregated by gender and there's a dining hall. It's very important to note that all Phantom Ranch accommodations and meals require advanced reservations. You can't just hike down and expect to grab a meal. Finally, if you prefer to stay outside the park, the nearest options are in the small town of Tucson just a few miles south of the park entrance. Further still, but with the most surrounding amenities, are Williams, Arizona on the famous Route 66 one hour south or Flagstaff, Arizona about an hour and a half south. Now let's discuss your dining options. They are mostly aligned with the lodging options I just mentioned with El Tavar's dining and bar being the most beautiful and highest-end option in the park.

Reservations here are required for lunch and dinner but breakfast is just by a waiting list. Bright Angel Choices nearby are perhaps the next nicest options with a steakhouse and a Fred Harvey's Burger and Tavern being the sit-down choices here. Maswick and Yavapai Lodges both have larger food court style dining along with a popular pizza pub at Maswick and the Tavern Bar at Yavapai which has a great outdoor patio. In addition to all these main dining options, there are many smaller snack and drink choices strategically placed throughout the park and also a grocery store with a nice deli section at the

Market Plaza near Yavapai Lodge. Finally, just outside the park a few miles away in the small town of Tucson, you'll have another 10 to 15 dining choices to choose from if you so desire. Now let's talk about getting around. The South Rim

Park is quite large with a total distance within the park of more than 32 miles from east to west. But be aware parking is very limited and some of the roads do not allow travel by personal vehicle. However, one of the great things about the park is that the Park Service runs an extensive free shuttle bus service throughout the South Rim with three interlocking routes, Blue, Red and

Orange. In season there's even a fourth route which brings you to and from the small town of Tucson. The service is free and runs from before sunrise until well after sunset. You might drive a vehicle to get to the park but once you're there there's little value for it, particularly since parking is difficult near the primary sites and much of the rim top drive is off-limits to cars. If you'd like a little more exercise than just riding the bus, then the park also offers a really excellent greenway trail system for walking and biking. It's mostly separated from the main roads and runs through the nearby forest easily getting you to all the main sites. We'd highly recommend this and it's very likely you'll get to see some of the local wildlife along the way. If you're lucky, you'll even see some elk right next door.

If we had only one pro tip for the park, it would be to bring your bicycle or rent one and use the greenway. Believe it or not, bicycles are really the best way to get around the park and they make exploring things so much more fun and easy. Now finally we get to that all-important things to do section.

There's a lot to cover here so I'm going to move fast. I'll start by covering all the things to do which are not attributed to Mother Nature. Across the vast rim top area of the park, there are a number of historic buildings, museums and tourist sites, not to mention some absolutely incredible rim top views.

Roughly speaking, this rim top portion of the park can be grouped into three areas. The visitor center, the village, and desert view. The visitor center area is the starting point and focal point for most visitors coming to the park.

Here you can get updates on park conditions and available programs, watch informative movies, and inquire about the various interpretive walks being offered and many other things. Unfortunately, as of early to mid-2022, the center is closed, I guess due to COVID. Nearby is Mathers Point, one of the most popular viewing points on the rim, as well as Bright Angel bike rentals where you can rent bikes and e-bikes by the hour in the day. There's also a convenience store to purchase your snacks and picnic lunch for the day, but be aware it's a busy place. And at the back side of this is Mathers Point, which is what we're going to go to. It will be Scottsdale Travel Chick's first view of the Grand Canyon since she was a little girl, which she doesn't remember. Now we're going down to

Mathers Point, which has a great view of the Grand Canyon.

Finally, a short one-mile scenic walk along the rim brings you to the small

Yavapai Geological Museum. It might not sound very cool, but don't miss it. The spot was originally picked as the most scenic point in all the park, and the building was built there to protect and present the view to well-to-do visitors coming to the park in the early 1900s. Today, it houses a lot of information about the canyon and how it was created by nature over hundreds, thousands, and millions of years. From the Yavapai Museum, you can also begin a unique rimtop walk they call the Trail of Time. More on that later. Next up, the village area is further to the west and is the other hub of heavy park activity. This is the original center of the park when it first opened in the early 1900s. There are many park lodging options here and a multitude of unique historical buildings to see. In this area, you'll find the Hoppy House. It's a large building built in 1905 and modeled after a Hoppy Pueblo. It was a radical new experience for early tourists and a place where visitors could observe Hoppy artisans at work and purchase their goods. Verkamp's Visitor Center was also established one year later as a trinket and curio shop and also the family home. It was operated by the same family through four generations until was finally sold to the Park Service in 2008 and turned into another visitor center and bookstore. The

Kolb Studio is also here and it was another of the very first buildings constructed of the Grand Canyon. It was the family home and art studio of the

Kolb brothers who were perhaps the most influential couple in the early promotion, photographic history, and documentation of the canyon. Also, across from the Altivar Hotel in this area, you'll find the restored Grand Canyon

Railroad Terminal, originally built in 1888 by the Santa Fe Railroad and which is still operated today by the Grand Canyon Railway. They offer daily tourist excursions between the town of Williams, Arizona and the canyon.

Finally, I'll mention Hermit's Rest here. It's another famous early building designed by Mary Coulter, eight miles to the west of the village, but the only way to get there is by Park Service bus or bicycle from the village area.

They've got a small gift shop, snack shop, really old and rustic. Here's their gift shop, little break area.

Finally, the third South Rim destination area within the park is called Desert

View. It's at the very far east entrance of the park, about a 25-mile drive, along the Rim Road from the main visitor center. In this area, you'll have a number of great viewpoints and a couple of attractions to check out. Perhaps the best thing about Desert View is that it's much less crowded compared to the other areas of the park. Three of the most popular sites in the Desert View area are the Watchtower. It's another historic structure designed by Mary

Coulter and offers excellent views of the canyon and Colorado River.

Tucson Pueblo Ruins and Museum are here as well and highlight details and history of a small ancestral Pueblan village. Navajo Viewpoint is also here and it's one of the best viewpoints in the entire canyon and great for sunsets.

Now, finally, let's get to all those things you can see and do related to what Mother Nature created. In this section, I'll quickly cover driving and sightseeing tours, helicopter and airplane tours, animal watching, rafting the canyon and Colorado River, mule rides, and the very best hiking options for the average tourist. First up, there are a couple of on-your-own sightseeing tours you can do. One is Hermits Road and the other the Rim Trail Walking Tour.

The 90-mile-long Hermits Road is a popular tour using the Park Service bus or bicycles and it offers up many incredible overlooks and information signs along with the interesting Hermits Rest at the end. Here is just one of the awesome overlooks you can experience along this road.

Some of the more interesting stops along the route are Mojave Point, Hoppy Point, and the Powell Memorial. The Rim Trail Walking Tour is a 13-mile trail running directly along the very edge of the canyon. It runs from South Kaibab Trailhead in the east to Hermits Rest in the west. Walking virtually anywhere along this trail will leave you in awe of the beauty below and you are never far from one of the Park Service buses that can pick you up and get you back to where you started. Later on in the hiking section, I'll give you the very best section of this trail you should do. Next up, Helicopter and Airplane Tours.

All of these will begin outside the park in the small town of Tucson and due to noise and safety issues, all such flights are no longer allowed to fly within the main park boundaries. So, they will typically fly you out over other parts of the canyon to the south or the north of the park. How about some animal watching? The canyon is chock-full of wild animals of all kinds and since they have all grown up in a protected park with no hunting and lots of people around, they are all accustomed to people and you will undoubtedly see something cool on your visit. From elk to deer to javelina coyotes and bighorn sheep, they all live openly and freely in the park. During our visit, we had multiple elk and deer sightings and we even saw three bighorn sheep as we hiked the Hermit

Trail. Apparently, this is extremely rare. All right, we were walking along the trail and then right up there are three bighorn sheep. Look at me, look at them.

Hello there, fellas. And one more favorite friend of visitors are the squirrels and chipmunks, but heed the warning in the park. Many seem tame and beg for food along the Rim Trail but resist the urge. Fun fact, one of the most common injuries in the park are squirrel bites. Now, finally, let's get to the fun stuff.

Whitewater rafting, mule rides, and hiking. For whitewater rafting, you might be surprised to know there are no tour operations within the park. First, you'd actually have to hike all the way to the bottom of the canyon and then you'd need a multi-day float trip to get out. However, if you want to do a river trip, there are half-day and full-day tour options just to the north of the park starting from Glen Canyon Dam. And there are other operators who provide multi-day options into and through the park itself, starting from three days all the way up to 21 days. Giddy up, cowboy, how about a mule ride? Mule rides into the canyon operate year-round and also book up well in advance. Trips can be as short as a three-hour guided ride all the way to overnight trips to the bottom of the canyon.

Supposedly, a weight limit of 200 pounds and other restrictions are strictly enforced, so be aware of that. Finally, we get to the grand pooh-bah of all the things to do in the Grand Canyon, hiking. Hiking in the Grand Canyon is unlike anywhere else on earth. Trails range in difficulty from easy 15-minute loops to multi-week treks and almost all offer spectacular views. For individuals who prefer guided hikes, there are a variety of outfitters offering many options, but in this video I'm going to give you the three best and easiest hikes to do in the park. That means these hikes are best for the typical visitor who aren't heavy duty hikers and come to the canyon for less than a day. Before I talk about those three hikes though, just a bit on hiking the Grand Canyon in general. There are four main trailheads on the south rim. Bright Angel Trailhead, South Kaibab

Trailhead, Hermit Trailhead, and Grand View Trailhead. You might have heard of the first two, but probably not the second two. Any trail into the canyon is going to be tough for most people, so think twice before going more than a couple miles down. And remember, hiking into the canyon is the opposite of hiking a mountain. Once you realize you're tired, the easy part is already over and the hard part of hiking up and out is what's left. Now it's time for me to summarize the three best and easiest hikes in the Grand Canyon. Number one, the

Rim Trail, including the Trail of Time. The overall Rim Trail covers more than 13 miles with at least nine dedicated group overlooks. The entire trail is awesome, but perhaps the best part is the section from the main visitor center to the village, and that's 2.8 miles one way. And remember, you can take the free bus the other way. It's a flat hike along the very edge of the rim top. It passes many of the sites I mentioned previously and has some absolutely incredible views. If you do only one hike, make it this one or at least part of it. A large portion of this section is also called the Trail of Time. It's an interpretive trail encouraging visitors to ponder and better understand the magnitude of geological time shown in the rock layers of the canyon. The next two best and easy hikes actually go into the canyon, one from Bright Angel Trailhead and the other from South Kaibab Trailhead. For the Bright Angel Trailhead, we'd recommend the three-mile round-trip hike to what they call the 1.5 mile rest house.

Along the way are two tunnels which can also be shorter turnaround options. One tunnel is only a few hundred yards from the top. Any of these Bright Angel hikes, from short to longer, will offer up beautiful views of the canyon, and going near sunrise or sunset make them even better. So babe, where you at this morning?

We are headed to the Bright Angel Trail. Okay, bright and early, or pretty early, seven o'clock. Ready to go all the way to the bottom? We're going to see how far we can get down.

Maybe either the one and a half rest stop or the three mile rest stop. Just check out the views from the very top of the trail. You don't have to go far to really experience the canyon.

And then the next kind of landmark is about 25 minutes down, where you get to your next tunnel, and you start to make some zigzags after that, all the way down to rest stop 1.5.

All right, we're one and a half miles down at the one and a half mile rest stop.

Great view still, and we're going to turn around. It's about 50 minutes, and we're here. That's the one and a half mile rest stop. Look at this view again, huh?

How awesome is that? All right, ready to go back up? I'm ready. All right, see how long it takes us. All right, so you made it. How was that? Much harder coming back up than going down.

Twice as hard. Three times, maybe. Our final option is from the South Kaibab trailhead. Here we recommend doing the 1.8 mile round-trip hike to Oua Pointe. This is a shorter, but steeper hike than the one from Bright Angels, so be aware of that. But the views from Oua Pointe are some of the best anywhere inside the canyon. So, if getting that great Instagram pic from within the canyon while exerting the least amount of effort is your goal, then this trail is for you. All right, babe, where are you at? We are on the South Kaibab trail. We're headed to Oua Pointe. All right. Over there somewhere. Is this your first hike in the canyon, huh? It is, yes. Are you up for it? I'm up for it. I think this is a short one. Yeah, it's only 1.8 miles round-trip, but there's a lot of switchbacks, as you can kind of start to see.

It zigzags down along this cliff face, more or less, down into that valley.

All right, Scottsdale Travel Chick did it. How was that? Check that one off my list.

 We loved each of these hikes, and any one of them are an excellent way to experience the canyon up close and personal. The canyon is one of the seven natural wonders of the world, so your life just wouldn't be complete without a visit, right? Honestly, consider spending three or four days here if you have the time and you like hiking. But, if you have only one or two days to spend, we hope this video has given you a great overview of how to do the canyon right and come back home with tons of great pictures and memories. Until next time, see you later.