First visit to Grand Canyon from England advice please

Hi RedRox and fellow advisors, my wife and i are flying to LV on 7th March. We have booked a car to drive to GC staying overnight on 10th and 11th. We are staying at the Grand Hotel, I ain%26#39;t seen nothing good about this hotel, it was booked for us through Virgin Atlantic. We are novice hikers and we would like to see as much as possible on foot (we was going to book a helicopter but decided to take your advice and walk and its cheaper.

Can you recommend a trail for our ability (we are both late 40s)

Are they easy to follow?

What%26#39;s the best restaraunt?

Is the road easy to follow from LV to GC?

Sorry for so many questions.

Thanks Allan

First visit to Grand Canyon from England advice please

Hi Allen and welcome

You are going to need that rental car since the Grand Hotel is in Tusayan which is about 15-20 min drive from GC S rim. You aren%26#39;t in the park at all. Once you get to the S rim I recommend checking out their ranger programs and taking a nature walk with one of the rangers. They will also have a list of hikes you might enjoy as well. In the canyon the El Tovar is the best try their French Onion soup. Yummo.

The drive is easy from GC S rim to LV. Its 1 hr to Williams then about 4 1/2 hrs give or take traffic and its almost all freeway to LV..

March will still be cold and possibly snow so layer and bundle up.

First visit to Grand Canyon from England advice please

Since you classify yourselves as novice hikers, I would suggest limiting your hiking down into the GC to a short distance on the Bright Angel trail. Just bear in mind that it will take you twice as long to walk back up, as it does to go down.

Actually, you will see much more of the GC by doing your hiking along the rim trails. Drive to various viewpoints and enjoy the different views. But take time to walk along the rim. This will allow you to see more of the canyon than hiking down.

Best restaurant inside the park is generally acknowledged to be at the El Tovar.

Don%26#39;t worry about getting stuck at the hotel outside the park by Virgin in your package. It doesn%26#39;t really matter except that you%26#39;ll want to get up early to drive back into the park to see the sunrise.

Driving from LV to GC is easy. You%26#39;ll pass over the Hoover Dam too. Allow about 5-6 hours.

Have a great trip.

Wow such a quick response to my questions. Thank you dragonflylady and RedRox for your advice which we will adhere to.

Just one more thing, do you know what we should expect from the Grand Hotel in terms of quality of room and food?

Thanks Allan and Julie

Expect basic, no frills. But don%26#39;t worry about it. Visiting the GC is not about what you eat and where you sleep. The Grand Canyon is enough to make up for all of that.

Thanks RedRox and i agree with what you say. We are really looking forward to our visit.

Allan

One other thing to note: bring $25 cash since that is the entry fee to the park. You could spend one complete day just driving to the various overlooks - that%26#39;s what we did and ended up at the easternmost one (Desert Tower) where there was a sunset program led by a ranger (might be season-specific - we were there last June). Many of the overlooks have trails leading down from them. You could go down each one a short ways. If you did that, you could spend a day and a half or two days.

The first day you%26#39;ll probably get there at the end of the day from Las Vegas. Not much time to do anything but you could enter the park and see the first overlook. Your entry fee is good for a week, it%26#39;s not $25 per day. Then spend all day the next day on the variuos overlooks and exhibits. Maybe you could get something short in the next day before you leave for Las Vegas. If you do do a longer hike, I agree on Bright Angel trail. It%26#39;s considered the easiest. I did it when I was 21 years old. We camped near the river for 2 nights. It took us 6 hours down and 6 hours up -- but we were 21 and in great shape and we were movin! We were passing mule trains. The way up took us the same amount of time only because it was freezing - literally. It was December and it was 80 degrees on the bottom of the canyon but only 30 at the top. We were so cold that we had icicles forming on our mustaches from our breath freezing. Sweat on our jeans froze and made our jeans stiff. We were practically running up the canyon, past frozen waterfalls oozing out of the cliffsides, lest we froze to death.

Bring good high-top hiking boots if you walk the trails because there%26#39;s lots of loose rocks and it%26#39;s easy to twist your ankle. If you%26#39;re way down there you%26#39;d have to be ';rescued'; because you couldn%26#39;t hike out. Back when I was hiking a lot I learned how to avoid twisted ankles and it takes some practice and quick thinking but you can learn it. The important thing to realize is that when you start to twist it, just go with it! It sounds counter-intuitive but if you try to resist it and keep yourself upright, you%26#39;ll just sprain it worse. You%26#39;ll have less injury if you go with the flow and try to gently fall to the ground. Try to correct the fall and you%26#39;ll twist it worse for sure. Since I learned that I%26#39;ve never twisted or sprained my ankle.

Thanks imager,

a very detailed and useful reply. It sounds like you are a seasoned hiker. No way will we even try to get to the bottom. We wil take the advice and find some view points and walk the ridge and have a ice meal at the El Tovar (see if them Yankee steaks are as big as they say!!) no offence with Yankee. So thanks once again all of you for your kind and informative replys.

Allan