1st time posting a trip report but I wish I'd've seen this before I traveled so I'm sharing it with you. People told me it would be very expensive, we'd need a lot of time, and in order to see things we'd need to go on long hikes, but it wasnt so.
We thought 1 week for Arizona would be enough and planned to visit friends in Pheonix and see some sites. We planned to be with our friends for shabbos and scheduled the trip from Tues-Tues. Then we realized that the places we wanted to go were far from Pheonix and we should've scheduled a full week without shabbos in the middle. We were scheduled to fly on Tues with a few hour stop in DEN (to see the rockies at sunset) but when that flight was canx and AA agreed to change the mileage ticket to a nonstop on Monday morning for the same 7500 miles we took that option so we'd start driving mon or tues instead of Wed.
In Oct we reserved a 1-week van pick in PHX ($800) on Tues but found it to much cheaper ($600) to pick up in the Travelers Inn -Budget (BGNX1). Turns out that is a 1-woman office that rents both Budget and Avis, she closes early and never answers the office phone so we were unable to change the reservation to Monday. When we picked up the van we were informed the lower price was excluding some taxes b/c we were traveling Israel and that can only be used if we show the itinerary and pick up at the airport, or provide both a foreign passport and driver's license. In the end, she was able to reactivate the airport pickup reservation we had to pick up by this location, so we paid a bit more but got a van the size of a 15 pass but only had seats for 12, so plenty of room for luggage etc.
The iceboxes were full of the kiwi kids food boxes (milk juice cheese yogurt deli nuts snacks and pizza pancakes waffles fish sticks fries frozen veggies etc that were trucked in from Chicago, we planned to cook with the airfryer we had ordered from the Walmart smoking hot deals
https://www.dansdeals.com/shopping-deals/walmart/smoking-hot-walmart-deals/Tues noon we drove through
Sedona enjoying the views/sites and taking pictures etc
and arrived at the
Grand Canyon South Rim ($35 entrance per van) close to sunset.
We first parked by the Yavapai Point where there were some benches to sit on and look into the Grand Canyon as the sun set behind us
We werent sure if it looks dif at dif viewpoints so we went to a few more like Duck on a Rock viewpoint:
Grandview Point:
and then Moran viewpoint at which point as you can see from the pics, we had seen enough of the same beauty and wanted to get to the hotel.
Tues night we slept in Page, Knights Inn. 2 rooms with 2 double beds and a fridge in each (and the air mattress we got from the Walmart smoking hot), good wifi and breakfast included prepackaged cereal, granola bars snacks etc you take to your room.
There's a huge Walmart right there open late.
Wed morning we went to
HorseShoe Bend ($35 parking and a 20 min walk to:)
but every angle we stood and looked it was just all amazing a views:
From there we tried to see some of the slot canyons or waterhole canyons or antelope but it seems it was all taken over by the native americans that require a guide and charge about $100 per person. We looked in from the road on top (but didnt see much...)
Next to the
Grand Canyon Dam overlook (free parking, no entrance fee, almost empty) also amazing views, just gorgeous, like nothing we'd ever seen:
Many told us we must go boating in
Lake Powell. We went to the Carl Hayden Visitor Center to find the right boating dock but they're closed on Tues and Wed... so we made a few calls. Most places didnt have boats or only rented for full or 1/2 day. We found a place that said they had only 1 boat left and it's first come first served. They wouldnt accept payment on the phone to hold it. BH when we got there there were boats avail. We park up in the lot and are driven on a gocart down to the dock of the Antelope Point Marina. It was about $85 and hour for a 12 seater pontoon boat (minimum 2 hours). The many were right, it was a stunning boat ride, driving through the canyon on water. The water was too cold to go in.
From there we drove to Panguitch where we had reserved a simlar hotel on orbitz but it was cancelled so orbitz told us to book anything similar and they'll reimburse the difference, which they did. We passed the "Welcome to Utah" sign and then made a U-turn to get some pics with the 'Welcome to Arizona' sign. We had some time before sunset so stopped by Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park but didnt think it was worth the price or hike to view some pink sand and continued on to Panguitch.
Thurs morning we drove to
Bryce. The drive on Rt 12 itself was just breathtaking:
At the Bryce entrance, they told us the hike we had considered was closed due to melting snow and there's little parking by each viewpoint so we should park in the lot and take their trolley. We thought that would be very time-consuming and we'd be reliant on their schedule so we tried to park by the viewpoints. If the lot was full we just waited a few minutes for a spot to open up.
We started at Upper Inspiration Point:
The other tourists werent too good at takin pics so my son made us a selfie stick by tying the phone holder from the car to a branch with the elastic straps from the disposable masks.
Some of us hiked from there to the Bryce Point while the rest of us drove and met the hikers there:
Sunset Point had nice bathrooms and a lot of parking:
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This is taking longer than I thought so I'll post it now to save and continue later.
Here's the full drive:
