Free Time at the Grand Caynon

6/21/2017

After we left the Desert View Lodge, the bus dropped the other 6 Stus off at the main Visitor Center. Our kids really just wanted to hang in the hotel room. What is it with kids and hotel rooms?

Anyway, we chilled in our room for about 30 minutes, then we got up in search of lunch. We walked to the bus stop and got on the blue line and rode it to the Maswik Lodge.

The Maswik Lodge

The Maswik Lodge has a cafeteria and pizza pub. I thought the kids would be cool with pizza, but they opted for other things. Riley wanted a hot dog and Reagan wanted a sub. The cafeteria was nice. I like having options and the ability to make the kids' individual wishes come true is nice. Especially when they have so little control on a trip like this one.

I felt instantly at home here. It reminded me of Disney. =)

We leisurely walked from the Maswik Lodge back to our room. We walked along the rim trail.

Allow me a second to talk about the rim trail... It's a paved path that runs along, you guessed it, the rim of the Grand Canyon. If I spent much time thinking about it, it would probably freak me out. I am not such a fan of drastic heights. I nearly freaked out and cried trying to climb off the roof of my frame shop. But that's neither here nor there.

Riley had no desire to walk near the edge. He kept me in between him and the edge. And that was fine by me.

As we were walking back up the the Thunderbird, we came across a house built onto the side of the cliff. (You can see the roof of it on the right side of the photo of Stu & Reagan leaning on the fence.)
It was just hanging there. A house. HANGING there, on the side of a CLIFF. Riley looked at me and said, "NO way are we going in there!" I said ok. Reagan, who was ahead of us, yelled back, "Hey! This house is a gift shop!" Riley looked at me and said, "Huh, a gift shop. We could go in and take a look." (insert parental eye roll)

We meandered in and out like this for about an hour. We ran into the other Stus. They were going to continue on exploring and head out Hermits Rest (a great spot at the end of the red line bus route). Our kids were done. They just wanted to go back to the room.

Riley looks dead. He was a trooper.

And seriously, when did Reagan turn 15?!

The Hopi House, Verkamps & The El Tovar

Before dinner, we walked around to a few different spots. We went into the Hopi House first. It is a beautiful, visually interesting building next to the El Tovar. Like the Desert View Watchtower, this was also architected my Mary Colter.

The kids got a kick out of the tiny door.

Verkamp's is just a bit further up the rim trail from the Hopi House. It has some cool historical artifacts in it, and (of course) more gift shop stuff.