Hey everyone,
this post is all about our grand adventure to the Grand Canyon, complete with lots of pictures. My apologies for the delay, we've been having a lovely time with family so this is a bit late coming. But I hope you'll enjoy this post now!
Our journey to where we were staying at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel was a long one taking us from Altus, Oklahoma all the way to Williams, Arizona. Ben was driving for 12+ hours and it was a bit stressful trying to navigate Flagstaff, Arizona with their one way streets plus the fact it was snowing. Flagstaff was about 30 minutes away from Williams, but we stopped there as we wanted to buy a couple of cold weather coats for both of us. We eventually found a shop that sold some nice ski coats (on sale!), and some warm gloves for me.
After all that we continued on to Williams some what carefully because of the cold and snowy conditions (see the blurry picture below).
Upon arrival to the hotel we unpacked our belongings from our truck and went to check in. We were greeted by a really warm and cosy hotel lobby and friendly hotel staff at the front desk.
Our room was on the next floor up and was very clean and comfortable. Although I think we were expecting a few more references to the Grand Canyon and the railway.
After putting our things in the room, we went to have dinner in hotels buffet style restaurant. The food we had there was absolutely delicious for both the two breakfasts and dinners we ate there for (we had lunch at the Grand Canyon). The restaurant was quite large and one particularly whimsical addition to the room was a small train that traveled around the room while we ate.
The next morning after breakfast we walked to a small outdoor theatre to watch a short "shoot 'em up show" before the train left the station to go to the Grand Canyon. That was my first experience of such a thing and we definitely found it amusing!
After the show we found our train carriage and took our seats. The pictures below are of the train, us and a few I took of the scenery on our 2 hour journey up to the Grand Canyon.
Once we arrived at the Grand Canyon, we decided to fuel up and have some grub before walking around the canyon. We both had a very hearty meal of a hot dish served in a sourdough bowl. It was delicious and perfect to give us energy to walk around in the cold weather.
After lunch we made our way to the trail alongside the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Now let me say that no amount of pictures can compare to seeing it in person, because they cannot fully show it's scale or beauty. It was so vast and we only saw a small area of it due to the fact we only had a few hours before the train left to go back to the hotel. Anyway, here are some of my favourites...
After the train arrived back at Williams we had dinner, bought a souvenir from the gift shop and relaxed for the evening. The next morning we traveled onto California to spend time with some of Ben's family in Porterville. We are currently in Fresno and will be until the end of this week.
I hope you enjoyed some of the pictures from our time at the canyon! I will soon be making up a post on our time at Yosemite National Park, so keep an eye out for that.
Take care everyone,
Kathryn.