Grand Canyon – South Rim
HIGHLIGHTS
Renting bicycles allowed us to cover a lot of the rim with the kids.
IT'S GRAND... AND, IT'S A CANYON.
To be in Arizona, in Camp Verde, only a few hour drive from the Grand Canyon, made a day trip an easy sell. We knew we wanted to see as much as we could and decided the best way was to rent bicycles. We opted to bike to Yaki point, a reasonable goal for the kids. We rented three full-size bicycles and a tagalong (a small bike mounted to the back of Bobby’s bike). The views biking on the rim are phenomenal. We stopped a dozen times on the ride to take in the views, snap photos, and rest. Bright Angels offers bicycle tours too but we’ve never been one for keeping schedule with a group so going solo worked best for us. Yaki point also has stables that house the horses and mules that carry people down into the canyon. Not something we’ve got the guts to do but a nice stop for the kids to admire the animals.
All in all, our trip from the visitor center to Yaki point and back took a little over two hours. We got lucky and were dusted by a little bit of snow while riding. The temperatures varied from quite cold to incredibly perfect along the route. To put it simply, the day was wonderful and the kids could not have been happier.
Wrapping up our Grand Canyon visit, we headed east on Desert View Drive stopping at all the pull-offs and view points along the way. The views here are out of this world and you can easily see for a hundred miles in some spots. We stopped at Desert View Tower just before leaving the park to see this incredible structure perched on the canyon rim. You could easily spend a week at the Grand Canyon and still not get bored. In the future we would like to do a multi-day trip into the canyon and see the river up close, but for now our day trip to bike the rim was just what we needed.
