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alang

Train Attendant
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Jun 1, 2009
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Planning trip from Dodge City, Kansas via SWC and the Grand Canyon Railroad to the Grand Canyon this summer. Any advice or insight?
 
Go into the canyon all the way down to the river, don't just peek off from the rim.
 
I was a tour bus driver at the South Rim until last year. Please just don't come in on the train and leave the same day. That is for tacky tourists. At least stay overnight, preferably three nights. Do the place justice and savor it. If you are ambitious and in good shape, consider hiking into the canyon, but this is not for everybody. I do recommend the 4 hour Desert View bus tour, which I wish I was still doing. Please feel free to private message me. If you get off the Southwest Chief at Williams Junction, it is a bit disconcerting to be driven down dark forest roads after you get off the train. The arrangement works fine. Don't do like I saw two ladies pull a few years ago. The shuttle will take you to the Grand Canyon railway Hotel, not the GCR station. They had come in that way and thought the train was delayed or something, and that is why they thought they had been brought in on a van. So, returning, they were sitting out on the Grand Canyon Railway platform at 3:45 am waiting for the train. We finally found them - the ' station " is the hotel lobby.
 
JJW59 said:
alang said:
Planning trip from Dodge City, Kansas via SWC and the Grand Canyon Railroad to the Grand Canyon this summer. Any advice or insight?
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Greatcats is right plan to spend at least three days. We took the SW Chief 3 years ago spent the night at the railroad hotel and then GCRR to the south rim. Spurge and go first class, we took the dome up to the canyon and took the observation car with open vestibule you can stand on at the back .

Do not attempt to go to the river and back in a day. First there are many thing to see. second and most important you could place your life in jeporady or at least ruin your vacation. Start with the folowing URL or google Bright Angle Trail. http://www.backpacker.com/october_08_ameri...tinations/12620

We took a shuttle to the north rim, much more quiet and less congested and hiked from north to south in three days. We hiked only from 0800 to 1500 the first day all down hill 0430 till 1000 the last two days. You need a permit to camp overnight in the canyon unless you have reservations at Phantom Ranch at the river. Permits are limited and are issued 6-months in advance. If you hike down without a permit if you stay at Phantom Ranch in dorms. There are also overnight mule trips to the bottom and you stay in cabins at Phantom Ranch or I believe one day trips to Indian Gardens. Go the the NPS Grand Canyon site for info on hiking permits and links for hotels etc. you can also try when you arrive at the canyon for space availble permits.

Also consider Bryce and Zion NPS. You rent a car in William or Flagstaff do both south and north rims. From the North Rim Bryce and Zion are two -three hours apart. It is a long drive back about-7 hours back to Flagstaff. but it worth it each is different form GC and beautiful in their own right. 7-9 days not counting train time would give you time to see without being too rushed. There is always more to see than time. The NPS sites for each of the parks has links to the hotels in the parks, which if you can is worth the money if you can get reservation. We generally have camped so not familar with the rates but they are competitive with out of the park facilities.
 
Greatcats here: I agree with the previous poster - unless you are a fool or a real hardy specimen, do not hike to the Colorado River and back in one day. To my knowledge, there are no rental cars available at Williiams and certainly not at Grand Canyon South Rim. The place for rental cars is Flagstaff. If you are simply visiting the South Rim, you do not need a car.
 
If you do rent a car and go to Zion and Bryce, consider the North Rim. It is a world apart from the South Rim. The South Rim is developed and crowded. The North Rim has a lodge/restaurant and very few rooms in comparison. Also has a lot less visitors because off the beaten path. South Rim has scrubby brush and is warmer than North Rim which has tall trees. (North Rim opens in late May I believe.) The peacefulness at the North Rim is awesome. We have been to the Grand Canyon over 20X and usually go to the North Rim. Going this June and may spend a day or two at the South Rim in addition to five nights at the North Rim.

Places to stay book early at the North Rim and I assume the same for the South Rim.

If you are able, try to hike a bit into the canyon (more if you can). Even going in a quarter or half mile can give you a much different perspective than from the rim.

Dan
 
Amplifying two points mentioned earlier-

-- You must stay overnight at the rim: not in Flagstaff, not in the Tusayan tourist gateway, but close enough to witness sunrise and sunset over the Canyon. The worst thing would be to ride the GC Railway there and back in the same day. The view from the South Rim is worth as many days as you can give it, but it's not worth the three midafternoon hours the train trip provides. At noon, with the sun over your shoulder, the Canyon is much less grand. It's quite disappointing to those who expect majesty and drama, like the painting displayed at the hotels and shops. Those scenes comes later (and earlier) in the day, when shadows creep up from the depths and colors richen. From noon to three pm, I'd rather eat a big lunch and take a nap.

I hope the railway sells one-way tickets so you can stay overnight. That's the only way I'd ever ride it again, but it is a very nice tourist line.

-- Hiking in the Canyon is serious business. I encourage you to sample the world beneath the rim, but stay within your own limits. If you get tired climbing a mountain, it's much less strenuous walking back down- but this is the reverse. Think of every step you take into the Canyon as three coming back up, and plan accordingly. Rescue is available on popular trails, and it happens often, but would be the most expensive part of your trip.
 
domefoamer said:
I hope the railway sells one-way tickets so you can stay overnight. That's the only way I'd ever ride it again, but it is a very nice tourist line.
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Grand Canyon Railway definitely sells both one-way tickets (in case, say, you want to arrive from Flagstaff by bus, and then take a train to Williams) and round-trip tickets for which the return is not same-day. You do have to call to get these options, though -- last time I checked, they weren't available on the website.
 
When I went I took a bus from Flagstaff. It gives you a bit longer in the Canyon than the train. Flagstaff also offers checked baggage which may or may not be an issue to you.
 
To further chime in on mine and other comments, I would certainly concur that if you have a rental car, go to the North Rim in summer if at all possible.( 217 miles from South RIm ) There is only one lodge over there in the park, but there is the Kaibab Lodge just north of the park boundary, and at the road junction 45 miles north, I am partial to the rustic cabins at Jacob Lake Lodge. ( good food, too ) If, in staying at the South Rim, accomodations are not available at the rim itself, staying in the village of Tusayan outside the park gate is not so bad. In the summer there is shuttle bus service provided into the village. There are six hotels there and I especially recommend the restaurant ( Coronado Room ) at the Best Western Canyon Squire Inn. But the point we are making is stay awhile and take this place in - it is ridiculous to rush in and out of this great treasure. By the way, enjoy the train trip from Kansas. I will be on the Southwest Chief next month enroute to Washington!
 
My son and I took SWC to and from the GC last Sept. We considered Williams Jct and the GCRR but found the options for overnight stays at the South Rim too limited. The only hotels they offered in their packages were not on the rim. You should also be aware that the GCRR does not run along the GC. You get no additional views of the GC by riding it. We found that going to the GC NP via Flagstaff worked better for us. They have checked baggage, unlike WMS. Also the Holiday Inn Express there has complementary cab service to and from the Amtrak Station. You can also use this complementary service to go to/from the Amtrak Station to connect with the van shuttle (90 minutes one way) to the GCNP. SWC gets in to Flagstaff around 8pm westbound and shuttle leaves around 8:30am for the park. The drive from FLG is scenic and the driver was a good story-teller. Using the shuttle to and from FLG was cheaper than going via Williams. I recommend it unless you are dead set on riding the GCRR.

We spent 3 days/2 nights at the South Rim and used the parks shuttle and the bus tours run by Xanterra. We also recommend the Desert View tour mentioned by another poster. My son uses an adaptive stroller, but the park shuttles all handle that. The scheduled tours need 24 hours notice to be sure of a bus with a lift, but that was no problem. The tour drivers were great to us. Some of the park shuttle drivers were clueless about using the tie-down fittings on my son's chair, but we considered it an opportunity to educate them. We did not miss having a car at all.

Leaving the South Rim we got the FLG shuttle about 4pm, arriving there about 6pm. Stayed at the Holiday Inn again and had pizza delivered to the hotel for our dinner. FLG is a college town so there is a wide variety of bars and pizza places. Complementary taxi picked us up in plenty of time for the 5am eastbound SWC. Hotel desk staff even made up a breakfast packet for us, since we'd miss the free hot breakfast.

Don't know which direction you will be coming from, so your connections at FLG might be different. But we found sitting in a staffed station at 5am with other pax more attractive than the descriptions of the Wms Jct connection that we have seen on AU. Especially with my son's mobility issues.
 
sueb said:
We considered Williams Jct and the GCRR but found the options for overnight stays at the South Rim too limited. The only hotels they offered in their packages were not on the rim.
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Just to clarify, as was pointed out above, you don't have to stay in a package hotel to spend more than a day at the Canyon. You can book the train and hotel separately, stay in any hotel you want, and spend as much time at the South Rim as you please.
 
darien-l said:
sueb said:
We considered Williams Jct and the GCRR but found the options for overnight stays at the South Rim too limited. The only hotels they offered in their packages were not on the rim.
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Just to clarify, as was pointed out above, you don't have to stay in a package hotel to spend more than a day at the Canyon. You can book the train and hotel separately, stay in any hotel you want, and spend as much time at the South Rim as you please.
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Yes, but you may not get the van transport from/to the WMS JCT cement pad in the desert where the SWC stops to the actual town of WMS unless you are staying at the GCRR affiliated hotel. This hotel is quite expensive, to my mind, when WMS is awash with other hotels of all price levels. Yes, you can purchase GC RR tix and lodging separately, but you pay a premium to do so. The GC RR web site and the web site of the affiliated hotel make the "a la carte" options hard to find.
 
sueb said:
Yes, but you may not get the van transport from/to the WMS JCT cement pad in the desert where the SWC stops to the actual town of WMS unless you are staying at the GCRR affiliated hotel.
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This is not correct: as long as you ride the Grand Canyon Railway, you're entitled to the WMJ shuttle. You can even book the shuttle (in conjunction with the GCRR train) as a "thruway bus" on the Amtrak website. Last time I visited Grand Canyon, I took the train from South Rim to Williams, one-way, and got on a shuttle from there to catch the westbound Southwest Chief. I did not stay in any GCRR-affiliated hotels, and did not encounter any problems. You can definitely stay in whatever hotel you want in Williams or South Rim. The GCRR website (understandably) pushes their "vacation packages," but if you call, I found them to be very flexible. And as I said before, you can even book the train and the shuttle on Amtrak.com for whatever dates you want. There's a bit of a premium for doing this, but it's not much: the price is $43 one-way, as opposed to the $75 same-day round-trip on the GCRR website. If you call GCRR, they might even let you have a different-day round trip for $75.

Anyway, my personal recommendation is to experience both: you can take the bus from Flagstaff to South Rim (operated by Arizona Shuttle these days), and the train from South Rim to Williams, or vice versa. I did that on my trip, and it worked out really well. That way, you get to see Flagstaff, Williams, ride the Grand Canyon Railway, and have it be cheaper to boot.
 
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I am glad you posted this question, and all the answers will be really helpful for my up coming trip in a couple of weeks. We chose to stay at Flagstaff at the Rodeway Inn(Choice Privileges AGR reward points) and rent an Enterprise rent a car for $69. 2 days (10000 AGR points) :D We are staying two days and plan on driving over to WMJ and Sedona and other places. I don't know if this is agood plan but it is a plan. If it isn't I'll know what to improve next time. Thanks for letting me piggyback on your topic :D
 
boxcar817 said:
I am glad you posted this question, and all the answers will be really helpful for my up coming trip in a couple of weeks. We chose to stay at Flagstaff at the Rodeway Inn(Choice Privileges AGR reward points) and rent an Enterprise rent a car for $69. 2 days (10000 AGR points) :D We are staying two days and plan on driving over to WMJ and Sedona and other places. I don't know if this is agood plan but it is a plan. If it isn't I'll know what to improve next time. Thanks for letting me piggyback on your topic :D
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If you get a chance go to Jerome (just south of Sedonna), an old town on the side of a mtn. I believe it was a copper mining town. There is a rail trip around that area too,but I dont remember the details!

RF
 
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Rail Freak said:
boxcar817 said:
I am glad you posted this question, and all the answers will be really helpful for my up coming trip in a couple of weeks. We chose to stay at Flagstaff at the Rodeway Inn(Choice Privileges AGR reward points) and rent an Enterprise rent a car for $69. 2 days (10000 AGR points) :D We are staying two days and plan on driving over to WMJ and Sedona and other places. I don't know if this is agood plan but it is a plan. If it isn't I'll know what to improve next time. Thanks for letting me piggyback on your topic :D
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If you get a chance go to Jerome (just south of Sedonna), an old town on the side of a mtn. I believe it was an copper mining town. There is a rail trip around that area too,but I dont remember the details!

RF
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Verde Canyon RR. I may hit that next month.
 
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