We awoke in our campground, Kaibab Camper Village, still being 45 minutes or so away from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  And this campground is the closest campground to the North Rim that isn’t part of the national park. 

I have always heard that the North Rim is very different from the South Rim.  I really wanted to do the North Rim this time around because we had visited the South Rim ten years ago.  Back then, I didn’t feel like we had been able to see it well enough. 

We were there in early May, and it was snowing.  While we had brought coats with us, we were still cold, and no one really wanted to do anything other than take a quick look and get back on the shuttle bus.  Most of the family didn’t see a point in going back to the Grand Canyon because they weren’t in love with it the first time, but I managed to convince them by promising to go to the North Rim.

Let’s just say, the North Rim is NOTHING like the South Rim.  There are no shuttle buses.  There are no hotels or “Grand Canyon Village.”  There is nothing very commercial about the North Rim AT ALL.  When you drive into the park, you have driven through miles of national forest on pretty much one road.  After you make it into the park, you still have about 20 minutes of driving to go before you reach the Visitor Center (though you do pass a national park campground or two), so you pretty much continue to just see more empty national park land. 

You finally make it to the Visitor Center and are just surrounded by Ponderosa pine trees, a rustic lodge, and other small rustic cabins for rental.  There’s a trail to take along the edge of the canyon, so we walked that. 

We were greeted by a Navaho man while walking back from the trail and stopped to visit with him for a bit.  We learned that his tribe is actually named “Dine” (sorry – not sure how to get accent marks on there – pronounced di-NAY.). He explained to us some of the history of his people and how he lives on the Navajo reservation near Page, AZ, while he isn’t working at the Grand Canyon for six months.  After talking with him and viewing the amazing lodge, we headed to take the scenic drive. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the scenic drive, but we were all rather tired from our Bryce Canyon experience from the day before and certainly didn’t want Alex to overdo it, so we didn’t even quite complete the drive.  We still saw amazing views and were all really glad that we had come to the North Rim as it was a much slower pace and more enjoyable experience for us than the South Rim.  And don’t worry – Alex wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near the side of the canyon if someone wasn’t holding onto her for dear life!

Rebecca