Nearly Nonsense: Canyons, Grand and Otherwise

When my dad and I visited the Grand Canyon five years ago, we didn’t know we were location scouting for another vacation. But as it turned out, this ended up being the spot for our first family holiday since my sister got married in 2015. And what a holiday it was!

The view from our room at the Sahara.

The five of us (parents, sister, brother-in-law, and yours truly) met up in Las Vegas, piled into a rental minivan, and road-tripped through three states in just over a week.

Home, home on the range...

We started on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where my typical luck held good and we got clouds and rain and even lightning. Just like the last time I was there!

When the sky looks like this and you hear thunder,
take the shuttle back to the Village for lunch!

But we all agreed that the canyon is at its grandest in a storm.

Fortunately, most of the rain stayed
on the North Rim.

We stopped in Monument Valley, but the road was closed due to flooding, so we had to be satisfied with taking pictures from the visitors’ center. Fortunately, as Dad and I knew from last time, that just happens to be the place to take in the most iconic view, so we didn’t feel cheated by the weather.


The image that's on all the postcards, courtesy of the visitors' center parking lot

Then it was off to Antelope Canyon, where, just by coincidence, our tour’s time slot happened to fall during the period in the day when you get those beautiful shafts of light filtering through the sandstone. It was magical.

No caption needed!

We spent two days in Page, Arizona, where we had a lot of fun despite being in the nastiest hotel (0/10 do not recommend cockroaches for roommates). We made friends with a local crow…

That's our rental car he's perched on.

…visited Horseshoe Bend…

Hard to get a nice picture when the afternoon
sun is right in your eyes!

…and took a boat tour of Navajo Canyon on Lake Powell.

Same views as the house boats,
fraction of the price!

We were happier with our lodgings in Panguitch, Utah, a town as cute as its name.

Welcome to the Old West!

But we only stayed one night before moving on to Bryce Canyon. Our visit there happened to coincide with a hiking field trip from a local school, so we shared the trail with several hundred third-graders who were vociferous in their objections to a forced march under the summer sun.


The hoodoo called Thor's Hammer. You can get a Lego kit of it in the gift shop. I'm serious!

Our last stop was Zion National Park, where we hopped on and off the shuttle from the visitors’ center all the way to the Temple of Sinawava. After the gob-smacking scale of the Grand Canyon and the bizarre landscape of Bryce, Zion is bound to feel somewhat…ordinary. But it was pleasant to return to a land of water and green things after being in the desert for a week!

Some of the trees were only just
getting their leaves in late May!

I usually like to visit new places when I travel, but this trip was a reminder of the value of retracing one’s own footsteps. Not only did I get to share this stunning landscape with members of my family who hadn’t been there before, but I myself got to see it in a different year, in different light, under a different sky.