Please tell this Easterner who has never been West, how does one tour the Grand Canyon? If one is not into camping overnight, I can only wager there’s a main road that skirts the rim with a multitude of scenic overlooks. Is this correct? If so, can one drive the entire length of it? (I understand there is northern and southern portion to the Canyon, is that right?)
What else can you share about the visit? Things that are a must-see or do?
Thanks, - Jinx
There is a road that runs along a small portion of the south rim. (The canyon is huge, so a small portion still works out to a lot of rim). There are several hotels, and a visitor’s center on the south rim as well. From the visitor’s center, you can hike down Bright Angel Trail for a short distance to see another perspective and additional scenery. (the park cautions casual hikers that hiking up is much more difficult than hiking down, so plan accordingly).
For the casual tourist, it should be enough to keep one busy for a day or two.
I’d recommend looking here for additional info.
I’ve hiked all the way to the bottom, and heartily recommend it (if you’re up to it). But you should make reservations at Phantom Ranch to stay the night. Several relatives have taken the mule ride to the bottom, and all ended up wishing they’d just hiked it (saddle sores). ymmv
More info here abouth the south rim. I’ll leave it to others to provide info on the north rim (I’ve not visited there).
I thought of a coupla more things. (need to wait to hit submit 
)
If you’re planning a summertime visit, it would be best to make reservations inside the park (my personal favorite is Bright Angel Lodge… just rustic enough to be interesting, but plenty comfortable). Sometimes the park fills up (there is a maximum number allowed thru the gates each day), but those with reservations are allowed in at any time.
You didn’t say; Are you planning a driving trip? Or are you flying into Vegas and catching a Canyon Air flight to the south rim? It would help us to make recommendations if we knew more about the nature of your trip. I’ve done it both ways and each has a lot to offer. It’s nice to have a car for wandering around the area surrounding the canyon, but the car is really a liability inside the park (jmo). There’s shuttle service to everywhere you need to go (including from the airport to the park). On the occasions when I’ve driven, I end up parking the car for most of the time inside the park.
Feel free to email me if you have any specific questions, I’ll try to answer them as best I can. (I’ll also try to check this thread occasionally).
Enjoy your trip!
What puillin wrote is very good. If you drive, know that parking within is really difficult. However you get to the main part (where Bright Angel Lodge & other accommodations are), there is a great overlook. The scale is so huge it is hard to believe that the north rim is about 12 miles distant at that point.
At that area, you can get a free bus ride westward along the south rim, with many stops along the way. You can get off, explore, then catch the next bus that comes along.Or, you can hike to the next bus stop from any one.
Eastward from the main part can be driven, and there are many overlooks along the way that are spectacular. It is a long way to the main road back to Flagstaff, and besides the canyon, the other scenery is interesting. The painted desert is straight ahead. That road, 89A as I recall, is good. If you hit that, you can go northa little way and get to a really intersting Indian Trading Post.
Actually, getting in by car is far easier from that east entrance. The south (main entraince) often has horrendously long waits to get in. Traffic an be backed up for miles.
Other alternatives are a bus tour from Las Vegas or Phoenix, which may be the easiest way.
More cautions about the trails. In summer, it is very much hotter at the canyon bottom than at the rim. BTW, it is a mile straight down, and the trails are long and not easy. No matter what time of year, if you plan to hike down, take huge amounts of water. Not only is it hot, but very very arrid. There are no water supplies along the trails!
IIRC, reservations at Phantom Ranch on the bottom are full up for several years in advance. There are quite a few hotels and lodges inside the Park within walking distance of the rim, plus there are free shuttle buses that go around all the time.
Be sure and step outside at night and see what the stars look like from really dark skies!
There is an airport nearby from which you can get plane or helicopter rides, but I’m against that due to the noise they make and the disruption of the peace. Plus, every now and then one of them goes down with few if any survivors.
I’d just like to advocate for a visit to the North Rim. See the link for details of how to get to the North Rim
It’s far more remote and far, far less crowded than the South Rim. It’s also about a thousand feet higher, and I find the vistas and geology even more stunning than that of the South Rim. Use the link above to arrange for accomodations in the park, or follow the links to nearby (relatively speaking) lodgings in Jacob Lake or on the Kaibab plateau.
But you won’t find the train station, the airport, the fast food franchises, the tour buses, IMAX theater, shuttle buses from the remote parking lots, or shopping malls that you’ll get on the South Rim. Just one gas station, campground, the lodge, and 1 restaurant and snack bar along with one gift shop and bar.
Damn, now I want to be back there!!
I visited for an afternoon last summer. It was really incredible. The one thing I really want to do if I go back is to see a sunrise and/or sunset. We just couldn’t do it with our schedule last year, but it would be incredible.
If you can wait, they are building a sky walk
I want to walk on that. It is scheduled for completion at the end of this year.
I want to walk on it too, but that’s at the Grand Canyon West, on the Hualapai reservation. Quite a ways from both the North and South Rim.
just a few words about hiking the trail: don’t do it!!
I did it when I was 20 and in good shape, and would have considered myself a “dumb tourist” just to stand at the edge and look down. So I proudly walked the whole thing, down and up again in one day. (Like climbing Everest–“because it’s there”).
Sure, I was proud of my achievement–after all not everybody can do it ,right?
The only problem is: I discovered that it doesnt get any prettier as you go down!
It’s the opposite of mountain hiking,-- where you sweat hard and then feel so satisfied that you’ve really earned that spectacular view from the top.Then you head back down , for a relatively easy end to your hike.
But in the canyon, you don’t see anything more spectacular as you descend, but you sure pay the price when head back up …
Definitely, get out of your car and hike a piece of the trail…just don’t overdo it.
Thanks for pointing that out, I missed that part of it.
I stayed in a cabin and didn’t go down into it. There are, indeed, lookout points that will give you the experience of the vastness of it. It’s breathtaking.
I’ve always wanted to take the mule trip down into the Canyon. The Sausage Creature has agreed to go with me, if I do it. You go down on one day, stay the night at Phantom Ranch, then back up the next day. It will make me sore as hell, but I still want to do it!
When I went, we did a helicopter tour - it lasted about 40 minutes - if you can affored it, I’d say do it - it’s absolutely breathtaking. I can’t remember what the name of the outfit was, but it was just in town - south rim.
It’s not that bad if you’re in reasonable shape. I did it last Fall and enjoyed it. The worst part is that you have to get up at O dark-thirty so that you can finish before the sun gets really hot. But it’s not a Disneyland ride by any means – there’s a small but not insignificant possibility of injury and some of the hairpin turns are not for the faint of heart.
Chappachula speaks a certain amount of truth – the best views of the Canyon are from the top. I did take one rather enjoyable hike down to Horseshoe Mesa in which it was interesting to see how features changed with distance. However I took another hike further west which involved a three mile (each way) hike to see a spring dripping from a rock formation – sort of lame if you come from New England where water wells up from the rocks pretty much all the time. Of course, by that time, I was pretty Canyon’ed out and would have done better to have driven out the east entrance to the Canyon in daylight to see the scenery.
The only time I was in Arizona was in January of 1996, so the North Rim, spectacular though my wife and I heard it was, was not available. We drove the road that goes along the South Rim, stopping at various lookout points. Even if what we saw is not what experienced Grand Canyon tourists consider the nicest view of the Canyon, it’s pretty enough that it’s probably the second most beautiful sight we’ve seen, touring the USA and Canada. (The first one is the entrance to the Kaumana Caves in Hawaii.)
Looks sorta like this.
I had to hit the road at 3:00 in the morning in Phoenix to get that shot.
No one mentioned taking a raft tour through the Canyon, perhaps the best way to see the place. The longer trips are spectacular; I don’t know anyone who’s taking the shorter tours.
Very nice! It’s now my desktop wallpaper.
It’s a good way to see it, and running the rapids would be phenomenal, but I still think you get the best views and sense of scale from the top. At the bottom, it’s just desert. Very scenic desert, but desert nontheless, and there’s plenty of that to go around in Arizona.
I disagree on the strongest terms. It’s anything but just desert, and there are sights down there that don’t exist anywhere else on the planet.
My choice would be to hike the canyon, multi-day exploring side canyons and getting away from Phantom Ranch, then run the canyon for a week.
