July 3, Day 14

This morning we left Ruby's at Bryce Canyon, and drove to the Grand Canyon. The night before, I had a hard time finding a hotel near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. But after quite a few phone calls, I found a place in Kanab, Utah, which ended up being over two hour's drive from the Canyon. We left Bryce Canyon around 10 a.m. and it was only about a two hours drive to our hotel for the night. But since it was only noon when we arrived at the hotel, it was too early to check in, so we drove on to the Grand Canyon. We had chosen to see the North Rim, because it was closest to our travel route, people had told us they liked it as well if not better than the South Rim, and we thought that since it was the fourth of July weekend, it may not be as crowded. The South Rim of the Canyon is the more developed, tourist rim of the Canyon.

Anyway, we drove through Kanab, Utah, (the place of our hotel) around noon, and the girls were hungry, but we missed the McDonalds so we told the girls that we would stop in the next town. Well, there was no next town. The little places that did show up on the map as towns had nothing in them. And I mean nothing!  So after an hour's drive, we drove past Kaibab Lodge which had a restaurant, so we stopped there. We were the only customers, and we had 4 choices: hamburger, veggie burger, hot dog, or chicken sandwich. But that was fine. 

The Grand Canyon was only about 15 minutes from the restaurant. The temperature was only about 70 degrees when we got there, and we could see thunderstorms around the canyon while we were there. The Grand Canyon North Rim is 8827 feet. We spent about 4 hours looking around the Canyon, and although we could hear the thunder, it didn't rain on us. We tried to get pictures of the lightening on the other side of the canyon, but we couldn't! There were different places that you could drive and see the view of the Canyon. The viewpoint that we liked best was the Angel's Windows viewpoint which was out on this rock that did have railing around it, but it was still a major drop to the bottom of the Canyon. It was hard to really understand how big the Canyon is. The word "vast" came to Jerry and me. It is quite a sight to see.

After looking at the Canyon, we drove back to Kanab to our hotel. It ended up being a nice place with an outdoor pool. The girls swam until about 10:30 p.m. The pool was suppose to close at 10:00, but the owner came out, wearing his cowboy hat, boots, and SIX-Shooter on his hip, saying that he was going to leave the pool open a little later. After noticing the six-shooter, Jerry agreed enthusiastically, telling him that he thought that was a great idea!

We drove a total of 214 miles today.