South Rim National Park {Grand Canyon RV Trip: Day 2} June 24

Today's road travel: 2 hrs 45 minutes to Grand Canyon Village: South Rim

Loved seeing the different landscape, sure is desert!

RV happenings, not much, lol. 

New terrain as we near the Grand Canyon

Stop for lunch!

Stop at the visitor center, a little disappointing so we didn't stay long. Another half hour into the park. 

This map was cool at the visitor center. 

We made it to the park about 1:00, plenty of day left to explore. 

We decided to drive the RV up to Grand Canyon Village before parking at our camping spot which was in the park. This provided a short walk trail to the south rim overlook. 

 

took pictures to try and plan our following day

We then walked back to the parked RV and drove to our campsite at Trailer Village to check in and get the RV all hooked up. Once settled we did take another jaunt out, hopping on the shuttle. 

We rode the shuttle to the area near Bright Angel Trail and stopped in at the lodge. 

We didn't hike the Bright Angel Trail, but we did see the trailhead.

We shuttled back to home base and when we arrived there was an elk wandering camp!

We had dinner and the kids played baseball. 

Another late night elk:

Playing with camp neighbor kids. 

Took some night photos. Wish I could share the ones from may camera... but not happening :-( 

Thankfully my photo took pretty amazing photos as well. 

 

Travel Day {Grand Canyon RV Trip: Day 1} June 23rd

We'd been planning this trip for over a year, dealing with national parks requires LOTS of time of prepping and booking campsites and such so there was a lot of prep-work for this trip. We booked the RV rental a year in advance, I used an app called RoadTrippers to plan out the route, then we guessed on the number of nights we'd want to stay in each place. Looking back I probably would have done two nights at North Rim and only 2 nights at Zion instead of 1 and 3. 

Thankfully we had a direct flight into Vegas. When we landed it was a sequelltering 105°!!!

We worked on figuring out how to get a car to go pick up the RV, not the easiest with 6 people and luggage, but we squeezed into a ride and made it about a half hour away to pick up the RV. We did the walk through, and got on our way. It was SOOOO HOT!!  She hadn't turned on the RV so it was a sauna inside of it! We kept the generator going to try to cool it down best we could. 

First stop was Costco to stop up on groceries and we ate lunch there. We had toyed with the idea of going to the hoover damn, but we decided before the trip not to do it. We wanted to get on the road and to our first stop so we could make it to our second stop (south rim) with plenty of time. 

Back in the RV, you can see our red faces, we were all dripping in sweat!

And I'll continue to mention... :-( I had photos on my real camera but all is lost thanks to teeth marks from the dog on my SD card and the I sent it in they were wanting over $2K to rebuild the card from the inside out. 

View of Lake Mead

NEW STATE for all of us!

Of course I had to make state line bags and they needed the motivation while sitting in a moving hot box. 

We found our spot for the evening, an RV park in Kingman. It was an hour and a half drive from Costco to our spot. We decided to not hook up just yet and run to grab dinner, or maybe just ice cream. I think we cooked dinner in the RV at the campsite then went to get ice cream at Culver's. Letting the generator run to cool the RV off. It was nice to hook up to electricity at the campsite and the RV FINALLY cooled off about midnight, lol. Once the sun went down to help. We didn't have an issue with it being too hot after that first day. 

 

June 22nd

 Yes, I know, I know I'm a little behind. I got all caught up before our big summer vacation. Then summer swallowed me whole and finally coming up for air. Also a little delayed getting to those vacay posts because the DOG ruined my SD Card that had all my Grand Canyon pics from my nice camera, so those are GONE! Sorry can't share the amazing condor I captured flying in the air. But I got plenty of photos on my phone. 

Before I get to our trip I need to post about my June triathlon that I did the day before we left. I woke up at 4ish to drive an hour to participate in the Clearwater Graniteman Triathlon. It was raining on me the whole way there and I really questioned myself why I was doing this, lol. 

Doing a full spring distance and the swim is longer than I've done previously but I was way better prepared this season having joined master swimming 6 months previously. 

The swim finish:

Transition all set up. 

Headed out for the run, this was the first triathlon I have done where we were allowed to have headphones for the run so I was updating Kyle lol. 

All done! Felt GREAT!

Mary had her last softball game since we were leaving the next day for vacay. 

The girls also got to their friend's for an afternoon birthday party. 

Thomas was so excited to bike to this cherry tree that we discovered when he had tennis camp by our house.