The Williamsons: Grand Canyon

In October of 2011 we made a purchase that Scott has been working to get for a long time...a trailer!

The week we bought it we put it to use. We spent 11 days going to Arizona and our final destination was The Grand Canyon. I'll start from the beginning of our trip.

This was a spontaneous trip so we didn't have much time to prepare. Scott mapped out the spots he wanted to see and we hit the road. Our first stop...Joshua Tree. It took us a few hours to get there and once we arrived we were welcomed with a sign that said the camp grounds were all closed due to flooding. I honestly wasn't too disappointed because we've camped in Joshua Tree many times before, and my 3 month old was sleeping soundly, so we decided to drive all the way to Arizona while we had the chance. We arrived at a lovely campsite near Phoenix called Lake Pleasant.

There wasn't much site seeing but we did enjoy playing games and taking advantage of the full hook ups. It was on a very pretty lake that would have been fun to use if the weather was a bit warmer.

After a day of re- cooping we were on the road again heading for Sedona. On the way there we stopped at Montezuma's Castle. It is a very preserved Indian cliff dwelling. This stop made us anxious to see more ruins throughout the trip.

Sedona was our biggest surprise for the trip. I had no idea it was that beautiful! We drove in to town and saw Red Rock everywhere. Autumn's family met us there and we got to spend a few days hiking, going into town, and the boys even rented Jeeps to go off roading.

We said our farewells to the Ethington's and headed for our next stop, Flagstaff.

Before me made it to our destination, we stopped to see more ruins. These were some amazing cliff dwellings, and they were everywhere. I'm not sure if you can spot them behind Scott, but in person we could see them throughout this canyon.

This is a closer look of the insides.

Flagstaff was a surprise to us too. I didn't expect to see forest in Arizona, and we were surrounded by it. We did a lot in the few days we stayed here. My favorite part was getting hook ups again :)

We did a lot in Flagstaff, one of our biggest stops was seeing the Meteor Crater. Apparently it's the most preserved and well known crater on Earth.

There was a down town area where we looked at some shops and we toured a famous Mansion owned by the Riordans. We learned that they're a well known family in Arizona that gained their wealth from cattle.

We also saw a lot more Indian Ruins...this park was full of them!

What's a road trip without eating at a local diner?

Our trip had one more stop, and it was the high light of our vacation. The Grand Canyon!

Lucky us, we got to spend that portion of our trip with Carla and her cute boys!

Scott and I were amazed at the beauty of this place. The second we drove in and saw it we had to stop in amazement. It's weird because you hear about this place often, but I'm so glad we were able to experience seeing it. And see we did...we saw it from just about every angle we could. We hiked into it, we went to every near view point, and we learned as much about it as we could.

This was a look out spot designed by a famous, female, architect.

I'm very big on reading about everything that we see. I want to learn the history behind it and truly know about what I'm looking at. I was looking desperately for the pamphlet I got about the lookout. After a few minutes of forcing Scott to stop and help me look, we opened the cover to the car seat to find our little thief who was holding onto to it tightly.