Category Archives: Touristy

Grand Canyon

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It was almost the same situation as last July.  Then we were in NE Pennsylvania and Roxie wondered how far it was to Niagara Falls.  The philosophy was, since we were so close we might as well go!

That was how it was leaving Prescott.  We were so close to the Grand Canyon we might as well go!

The last time we were at the Grand Canyon was in 1999.  We had our two kids with us (10 and 16) and our SOB (24′ Nomad).  We had some big problems with our door latch on the trailer.  One morning Roxie and I woke up with the front door wide open!  We had another time where we could not get INTO the trailer.  Our son had to enter through the emergency window to open the door.  We also had refrigerator problems and found our ice cream melted!

This time, however, we could not get a spot around the south rim.  We stayed at a KOA in Williams:

This KOA reminded me a lot of the one my parent’s owned in Redding.  I remembered working there, showing campers their spot with the golf cart.  Also, the owners of this KOA were part of the family that my parents knew from Chula Vista.

The first day we were there we drove up to the canyon.  The Grand Canyon is misnamed in my opinion but what other superlative would you use?  Fantastic Canyon, Tremendous Canyon, Huge Canyon?  The weather turned out to be very nice and we did a bit of walking and took some shuttles.  We also took some photos:

One thing that I found walking around was this:

It appears that years ago they ran a phone line across the canyon.  You can see one of the poles just a bit down the canyon.

The next day we took the train up to the canyon.  It was an experience that we thought we would do this time.  The trip up was enjoyable but they sure do go slow!  We were able to walk a different part of the canyon.  We even toyed with the idea of coming up the third day and walking down the canyon a bit on this trail:

We took the slow train back and got in the kid’s car with a very talkative train employee which made it seem even slower.

The first day we also researched some NFS locations to boondock for free that were very close to the park.  We thought that would be a good place to stay for the third day.  However, Roxie fell each day that we were there so she did not feel up to walking around much more.  She was having one of her bad days…

Off to the next stop, trying to avoid the heat!

Since we were in the area…

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We were in northern-ish Pennsylvania.  West Virginia to the south and New York to the north.  We succumbed to the adage of “we were in the area so…’.  The area we were near was Niagara Falls!  Honeymoon capital of the USA!  This is one of the places that Roxie and I have both wanted to see but for years it seemed unattainable.  Not until now.

We were unsure where to stay until I looked at the WBCCI courtesy parking for the area.  I had tried this before for a couple locations earlier but it didn’t pan out.  This time we got a quick response from Mike Clack and he said he had plenty of room for about 6 or more trailers and we could come on by.  I wanted a secure place to drop the trailer for the day while we went to the falls.  This worked perfectly.

We made it to Mike’s, not until I had missed the turn once and had to reverse.  It was easy to get to his parking area and setup the trailer.  Very grassy.  As soon as we go there it started a downpour of rain and it was on and off all night.  The next morning there was standing water in the grass by our trailer, about 1-2”.  I was unsure if I was going to get out the next day.  Here are some pics of his location and the secluded entry for it:

Yes, those are ruts I carved getting out in 4×4.

Mike’s location is about 30 minutes from the falls themselves and we enjoyed seeing them.  The first stop was down from the falls to see the whirlpool:

Everything at the falls was a bit commercialized but I kind of expected it to be, still a disappointment.  We immediately set off on the Maid of the Mist:

Yes, you get wet but you don’t care.

We also went to the edge of the falls:

We have heard the view from Canada is prettier and also there will be fireworks.  So we decided to head north.

We got to the Canadian border guard and he asked if we had any weapons with us.  No, did not bring the gun.  But he mentioned pepper spray as one of the ‘weapons’ so that sent us under the ‘canopy’ for a bit more investigation.  They looked in the truck, in the shell.  Roxie thought they might want to take everything out of the truck and look in each bin.  Oh well, if that is what they wanted, we had some time to kill.  They didn’t look too thoroughly and let us go our way.  They were somewhat interested in our full-timing and why we had so much stuff in the truck.

Since we were over the border we did a bit of driving around, went to Niagara-by-the-Lake and was able to see a glimpse of Lake Ontario.  Got some diesel and had to convert liters to gallons, and USD to CAD (it was more expensive than the US).  We went back to the falls and decided not to pay the parking price of $5 per 15 minutes.  We finally parked up the hill, ate some dinner and walked down to the falls and waited for the fireworks.

Since we are so far north it doesn’t get dark until 9:30 or so.  Fireworks didn’t start until 10 and there were lots of people.  They also light up the falls.  You can see the American Falls in red, white, and blue with the Canadian Falls in red and white:

It took us a while to walk back up to the truck but not too long to get back to the US.  We were back to the trailer about 11:30 and leaving the next day.

We were able to see Mike on the day we left and thanked him for the spot.  We said that he welcomes anyone to stay there when they want.  Look at the Airstream Courtesy Parking group on Facebook for more information.

We headed off down the road to our next destination.