Arizona Trip - Day 2 (Glen Canyon Dam Tour & Horse Shoe Bend)

After driving the RV for nearly 7 hours on the first day, I dropped the visit to "Zion National Park" from my plan.

We got up very late. We were amazed by the view of the Canyons surrounding Lake Powell, from the campground. I signed-up for the Navajo Canyon Ferry tour for the next day. Unfortunately, the tour to the Rainbow Bridge was not available. We went to Glen Canyon Dam for the dam tour. Glen Canyon dam tour was nice. The tour guide showed us the interiors and also the power plant. We had our lunch and then went to Antelope Canyon. We took a few snaps of the upper Antelope Canyon from the parking lot. We didn't hike there.

We then stopped over at Horse shoe bend. After a 3/4 mile hike, you get a spectacular view of the horse shoe bend. You can see the greenish Colorado river 1000 ft down. It was quite amazing. There was a sand storm and my daughter got frightened because of the cold weather and the sand storm. We took a few pictures there and returned to the campground at about 4 pm. We stayed in Page for that night also.

Arizona Trip - Day 1 (It started with a bummer)

I had planned to visit Phoenix with my friend's family. However, just one day before the trip, my friend's kid got rashes because of being allergic to a cold medicine. My friend dropped off from the trip. I started to think whether I should still rent the RV or should I just rent a minivan. I finally decided to rent the RV.

On 26th Dec, we got up early in the morning and got ready. We were waiting for the cab for our pick up. We waited until 5.10 am (our flight was at 6.25 am) and didn't see any signs of the cab coming for pickup. I called Yellow Cab and was surprised to hear that the cab will be delayed by 25 minutes. I canceled the cab and got help from my friend to drop us off in the airport. I did a curb side checkin and cleared the security checkpoint. The flight takeoff was delayed by an hour due to some fuel gauge issue.

The flight landed in Phoenix at around 9.35 am. We took Super shuttle and reached the RV rental lot. Eric (RV rental guy) gave me a 1/2 hour training+tour of the vehicle. I picked the vehicle at around 12 pm and went to Safeway. We did some shopping, had lunch and left Phoenix at around 2 pm. I didn't feel a lot of difference between driving an RV and a U-Haul truck.

It took about 6.5 hours to reach Page. On the way to Page, I was stopped by a cop for driving at 56 mph in a 50 mph zone. I didn't realize that I was driving above the speed limits. He warned me and let me go. This is the first time I was intercepted by a police. I was lucky enough, not to get a ticket :)

We reached Page at about 8.30 pm. It took about 30 minutes to figure out where the camp ground was. Finally, we called the support number to get directions. The camp ground was in Wahweap Marinas, facing Lake Powell. It was very cold in the night. I hooked up the connections to the outlets (water/sewage & electricity). We were very happy to get access to unlimited resources :) My wife prepared a delicious dinner. We had our dinner and went to sleep.

Arizona Trip - Preparations

Our office was shutdown for the holidays. My friend and I decided to go to places in and around Phoenix. We decided to rent an RV for the trip. That was the exciting part of the trip :)

We booked tickets on US Airways (through Hotwire). We booked a 29 ft motor home from Kachina RV Rental. We booked the camping ground in Wahweap Marinas, Page. We are all set to leave on the 26th Dec. We decided to go to Zion National Park, Glen Canyon and to a few places in and around Flagstaff/Sedona & Phoenix.