Grand Canyon Thanksgiving

When we started this traveling life, the one place we HAD to be, booked seriously far in advance, reserved even before we had bought the bus, was the Grand Canyon for Thanksgiving.  The plan was to meet our cousins there for dinner at the lodge Thanksgiving Day.  It shaped our whole route for the Fall.

Then, at the last moment disaster struck.  The cousins got sick and we abruptly became a party of two.  Oh well, the reservations were made, we'd been looking forward to it so we soldiered on without them.

Chloe on the South Rim

The Grand Canyon is beautiful.  Stunning.  No pictures can properly do it justice. It's just so indescribably... huge. Majestic. Breathtaking. Mind-boggling. Well it appears no words can do it justice either.

We've been there before but this was our first venture in an RV.  We stayed at the Trailer Village, full hookups that came with a daily family of elk wandering through the campgrounds.  Based on prior experience we weren't expecting to find much in the way of cell coverage, so it was a good week to disconnect and take a real week's vacation.

Elk in our campsite every morning. Chloe was not amused.

Thanksgiving dinner was at the El Toval, the lodge build by the railroad company, it seems every National Park has one of these amazing lodges. So far all the ones I've seen are stunning so we were really looking forward to the dinner, and it was fabulous. They don't take reservations which caused us some angst, but it worked out fine.

The dining room at the El Toval on Thanksgiving

The only downside to the week was the crowds.  Apparently all of Southern California and most of Arizona come to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for Thanksgiving weekend so we struggled to find breathing room and ended up skipping the more popular areas of the park. That's OK we'd seen it before.  We found plenty to explore right around our campground and on the nearby bicycle path.

I'm grateful that Lance got the heater fixed before we arrived. The weather was sunny and warm in the day but downright cold at night.  We departed Monday after Thanksgiving, with a fierce and chilly wind that slapped at us all the way to Scottsdale. The Grand Canyon was our last stop within the comfort zone, from here on out we're truly without a plan. Without direction, but not rudderless.