After a night at the Grand Canyon Motel, we set off to see the landmark it is named after.
Our route dictated a visit to the North Rim. This is the less visited part of the Canyon (most come up from Las Vegas to the more developed South Rim), but offers views over offshoots of canyon rather than main, Granite Gorge. These aren't the traditional views, but are still awesome.
After an hour's driving from Fredonia, we reached the Grand Canyon National Park entrance, where our passes let us in, and drove up to the Lodge. This was our first view and it was, frankly, astounding with stunning views.
I think one thing they do really well in the States is the National Parks - they manage to be commercial, but at the same time not tacky (not true of everything, it has to be said!) and the Rangers REALLY seem to love what they do. They are helpful, informed and the people in the shops seem genuinely friendly and nearly everywhere they'd give the kids a little gift (whether or not we bought something) if we stopped to talk to them.
It really is almost impossible to take in the immensity of the Grand Canyon or do it any kind of justice in photos. As we stood on the edge of the Canyon, a huge, elegant California Condor swooped over us.
After a light lunch at the Lodge, and a bit of shopping, we drove up to the other viewpoints on the North Rim. These included the only point on the North Rim where you can actually see the Colorado river, a mile below and the far end of the gorge, snaking across the plains.
The Grand Canyon truly is a fantastic sight, which is impossible to grasp the scale of in a short visit. An earlier explorer claimed it would "take a week to see to the bottom" and I'm sure it would take at least a week, including trekking down in the Canyon floor to begin to feel you knew the Canyon. This was certainly a place I'd like to visit again.
Whilst at the Grand Canyon, someone mentioned how good Zion National Park was. Checking our map showed it was only a short detour on our way to Las Vegas. So, as it was covered by our National Park pass, we decided to pay it a passing visit.
Once through the park entrance, the drive into the main part of the park is down a steep, switchback road and a couple of tunnels, which take you deep down into the bottom of the Canyon. It was fairly early, but already getting warm as we parked up at the visitor centre. We quickly realised that we couldn't drive into the main part of Zion Canyon (this is true most of the year), so we quickly boarded the bus which runs around a number of stops through the main canyon.
Each of these stop-off points offer the chance to let you walk up to various sights or attractions like the museum. We were on a very tight schedule (we had to be in Las Vegas before 6PM) and Zion was a bonus stop for us, so we restricted ourselves to a single stop at the Weeping Rock.
Here water falls through the rock and comes out through cracks in it, providing a surprisingly cool and lush spot at the top of a glorious valley. Standing under the rock and looking back down the gorge, it was easy to see how Mormon settlers saw this as God's chosen place, especially in contrast to the barren country for miles around, and gave it it the name Zion.
We couldn't stay long here, but were so impressed that we carried on round on the bus to the end of route, rather than taking the bus straight back on the other side of the road. Along the way, we spotted climbers on the high cliffs and the bus driver announced on the tannoy that it can often take 2 days to climb the higher cliffs with climbers sleeping on the rockface overnight!
As we drove back along the gorge, the driver stopped, briefly, to let us all admire a deer, resting in the shade by the side of road.
Our visit to Zion had been a spur of the moment thing, brought about solely by an overhead comment the previous day, but it was well worth it. This was probably our favourite place of all and somewhere worthy of many days investigation, rather than just the couple of hours we were able to give it.