The West Coast Road Trip that grew - Day 3 Drive to Grand Canyon

[Libby]

The West Coast Road Trip that grew - Day 3 Drive to Grand Canyon
Sunday Sepember 24th

Day 2 Here
Today is the day that grew the most as we were planning it. It started off as a trip to Hoover Dam and a drive to the West rim of the Grand Canyon. Followed by a night near Kingman.

With much watching of Youtube we decided we'd much rather visit the South rim and spend 2 nights nearby in Tusayan. So much more driving. Much more to see and a tired but happy family.

So on with the report.

We woke early and spent some time trying to put our journey into the rubbish satnav that we got as part of our gold insurance. It just wasn't going to work for us so we downloaded some Google maps and kept our fingers crossed that, being a luxury car, the in car satnav had not been disconnected.

We took our large cases to the car and grabbed a quick breakfast at Starbucks before grabbing our hand luggage and checking out.

This might be Day 3 of our trip but it was the first time DH would be driving any distance so he took his time to be comfortable with the car before driving off. He turned on the satnav and it worked! This made the trip a lot less challenging. (We did have a few problems with things like our destination addresses had a road name but the satnav wanted the road number, or we had a road with a numeric name but the satnav wanted the number written as a word.)

So with a deep breath we set off for our first stop, the Hoover Dam which took less than an hour to get to. It was amazing to be properly on the road again after a 4 year break.


When our journey plans had changed we decided not to go down to the Visitor Center but to park in the top car park and walk onto the bridge to get views of the dam.

We still had to stop at the security checkpoint and tell them we had no firearms or drones and then we were on our way to the car park.

It was fairly busy but we had no trouble finding a space as people didn't spend very long there.

There were lots of information panels as well as a steep climb (both steps and ramp) to the view point.

At the top I tried to overcome my fear of heights (although I think it's more "the call of the void" in my case) and managed to get one peek and a photo of the dam before scurrying back to safety.

My photo of the dam

DHs photo of the dam

I sat in the shade while I waited for DH and DD to get a proper look at the dam.

Once back at the car park we used the loos. They weren't plambed in but weren't too bad to use, just a little draughty for the ladies.

Next we wanted to go to the Arizona Route 66 Museum in Kingman but the satnav just didn't recognise our instructions so we put in a McDonalds in Kingman instead and thought we'd work out what to do once we had use of the free wifi.

At McDonalds we each got a good sized McFlurry

And found we were only 6 minutes away from the museum.

The museum was fairly quiet. On enetering the elderly gentleman who was manning the desk mistook our daughter for a boy, she was wearing t-shirt, shorts and a baseball cap.

"How old are you sonny?"
"I'm nearly 30"
"13 eh? We'll call you 11!"

Hilarious until, because she's now 11, we were mistaken for her grandparents.

It was a very interesting museum

We spent about an hour there. Before having a look in the gift shop (confusingly there are 2 shops - only one seemed to be run by the museum).

Outside we'd noticed a static steam engine and obviously had to go and have a look before heading off on our way.

Our next destination I'd found just by studying google maps. I subsequently read about it in trip reports. We are heading to the Road Kill Cafe for a late lunch.

We took about an hour to drive to. It is possible to follow route 66 there but it would have added about 30 minutes to our journey and we were already hungry.

It was nearly 4 O'clock by the time we arrived

It was a fairly simple place with an amusing menu with items such as "The chicken that almost crossed the road"
but it was all very normal fare.

We were amused by a couple on the next table that ordered dessert to eat while there main was cooking and once the main arrived they boxed up dessert and started on their main.

After lunch we had a little drive to look at Seligman before heading off to Tusayan.
This took about 90 minutes with a stop for petrol. Not knowing the car or the area we thought it best not to get too low just yet.

We were staying at the Grand Hotel at Tusayan. It was very nice, our room was lovely but seemed pushed off down a service corridor. As I've said before, all our expedia booked rooms were fine BUT all had bad positions or rubbish (sometimes actually the bins) views)

Hotel lobby

It was dark now and we were still fairly full from lunch but fancied a snack. But couldn't find anywhere we liked. The is a pizza hut express at the info center but it was shut and only opened at lunch time. We ended up getting some snacks at the petrol station and turned in for the night as we want to make the best of our day at the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

Day 4 Here

[Mortimer Mouse]

lol at your '11 year old sonny'

Looking forward to seeing your Grand Canyon photos.