Roadtrip: So Cal To The Grand Canyon With Bryce And Zion

If you're looking to see the Grand Canyon and surrounding areas, we've done a roadtrip from San Diego around the Grand Canyon and back. Along with Grand Canyon National Park, we enjoyed northern Arizona, Southern Utah, Bryce and Zion National Parks, and Las Vegas.

If you're looking for a two week plan around the Grand Canyon area, here's our itinerary so you can plan your own amazing roadtrip.

Around The Grand Canyon Itinerary

Our main itinerary around the Grand Canyon was for a two week roadtrip. We started and ended in San Diego, CA. We stopped at the following:

• Scottsdale, AZ
• Flagstaff, AZ (where we "home based" for Sedona and the Grand Canyon)
• Page, AZ
• Bryce Canyon National Park
• Zion National Park
• Las Vegas, NV

We actually planned this to arrive in Las Vegas for the 4th of July - which I highly recommend if you have children! 

Trip Details:

• 14 Days
• 1,452 Miles
• 3 National Parks
• 1 National Recreation Area

Trip Background

We planned this trip for early summer to avoid the high heat, and also try to enjoy certain activities like 4th of July in Las Vegas. We've regularly stopped in both Scottsdale and Las Vegas, but many of these other stops were new for our family.

From a roadtrip standpoint, we enjoy driving in our SUV - a Ford Expedition. We stay in hotels along the way, taking advantage of points and status.

For this trip, we stayed in multiple Hyatt properties through this trip, with a couple exceptions - Bryce, Zion, and Las Vegas. For those, we did either Marriott properties or American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts.

We'll cover each stay below, along with things to do.

Main Roadtrip Stops

Here were our main stops and stays for this roadtrip, along with activities in each area.

Scottsdale, AZ

Time: 2 Days

We start a lot of roadtrips heading towards Scottsdale and Phoenix, so we're pretty familiar with the area. We originally intended to stay at the Hyatt Gainey Ranch, but the hotel was being remodeled and it was NOT ready for guests when we stayed. Instead, we called an audible and went to the Andaz.

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA)

If you're looking for a fun way to kill an hour or two, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art was surprisingly fun and engaging for our kids because about half the exhibits were engaging. 

The reason we decided to venture here is because admission was free when you stay at the Andaz (it's one of the resort amenities).

The museum is also located near downtown Scottsdale so you can walk and explore before or after.

White Tank Corral in Waddell, AZ

If you're looking for a fun evening activity with food and music, check out White Tank Corral on Friday or Saturday nights. They have live music, great burgers, a bar, and games like corn hole and Jenga.

Flagstaff and Sedona, AZ

Time: 3 Days

For the next segment of our trip, we "homebased" in Flagstaff to see Sedona and the Grand Canyon. The reason is that we prefer to stay in hotels where we can redeem points and know what to expect. Flagstaff is one of the last major towns before the Grand Canyon that have hotels.

It's roughly an 1 hour 15 minute drive from Flagstaff to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Its roughly a 45 minute drive to Sedona.

Flagstaff itself has a cool downtown that's about 3 block by 3 blocks, with good food and fun shops.

On our trip we actually took two day trips down to Sedona. One to enjoy Slide Rock, another to check out Sedona.

We did the observatory on one of the evenings (since you don't want to go until night), and enjoyed downtown Flagstaff for breakfast once and dinner once.

Lowell Observatory

The Lowell Observatory is a great stop if you've in Flagstaff. Unlike most observatories we've ever seen, the Lowell Observatory has tours every night, and they pull out the telescopes and show you stars and more (weather allowing).

They are open until 10pm everyday (except Tuesdays) and the tickets are reasonable.

Beyond all the history, letting your children gaze through the telescopes to see objects is pretty cool.

The best time to go is after dark. You really don't need to get there before 7pm. We planned on having a picnic for dinner at the observatory, grabbed some sandwiches, and then went in afterwards.

Slide Rock State Park

This is a MUST STOP if you have kids - Slide Rock State Park outside of Sedona is a river that carved natural water slides in the rock. The water is cool, but the Arizona warmth makes this really enjoyable.

Slide Rock is an Arizona State Park, and so it does have park hours - 8am to 6pm in the summer. The parking lot will get full in the middle of the day. We recommend planning to arrive at the park at 3-4pm, and enjoying it until closing time. Your kids will definitely be swimming and playing for 2-3 hours in the water!

Sedona

Sedona is the epitome of a tourist town. There are a lot of things to do around Sedona if you enjoy the outdoors - lots of hiking and trails, and some sightseeing.

But the main street of Sedona is a tourist trap - lots of gift shops, ice cream parlors, and tours that are leaving to get out into nature. 

Sedona is a great stopping point if you want lunch or a treat, but the real fun of Sedona is everything outside of town. Walking along Oak Creek River (above), or going Trout Fishing at Sedona Rainbow Trout Farm (below).

Grand Canyon National Park

Time: 1 Day

We planned to spend one afternoon at Grand Canyon National Park. If you we're planning big hikes, you might want to spend more time. However, my wife cannot do big hikes due to a knee injury, so we stick to smaller flat hikes and other exploring.

One thing we've learned about National Parks - sunset is one of the best times to explore! So we left Flagstaff after lunch and arrived in the mid-afternoon.

All-in-all our itinerary has us in the park for about 6 hours and we felt really good about what we did and saw.

Our itinerary in the park:

Mather Point: We started here after arriving. They have restrooms and a park store. The lookout at Mather Point is an awesome first look into the canyon. You can also walk along the Rim Trail.

Yavapai Geology Museum: Our next stop was that Yavapai Geology Museum, which has a great lookout that's indoors (the glass hangs off the edge of the cliff). We also walked the Trail of Time - which is a small walk/hike along the rim of the canyon that shows you all the years of layers in the sands. There's a parking lot here that allows for easy parking.

Verkamp Visitor Center/The Lookout: Next we headed to the Verkamp Visitors Center where we parked for the rest of our stay in the park. This is where the main hotels are located, including the famous El Tovar hotel. There's a great lookout point right outside the hotel, and you can walk along the Rim Trail to see all these places without having to get back in your car.

Kolb Studio: This is a cool little studio/giftshop that hangs over the cliff edge. I highly recommend you go through the shop and up the stairs onto the outdoor deck!

Bright Angel Trailhead: Even though we are a little limited mobility family, we did want to hike a little into the canyon. The Bright Angel trail is a good place to do this. This trail can take you all the way to the bottom of the canyon (that'll take a day). But you can hike down a little bit and get a sense of the scale of the canyon. We went down about 20 minutes, went through both tunnels (which are more like arches), and then hiked back up. It's narrow at spots and watch for donkeys! 

Arizona Steakhouse: We had dinner at the Arizona Steakhouse, which has a great view of the Canyon. The windows all look out over the rim, and the food was good. They have a kids menu, and beer and wine. While many places say reservations required, we found that it was only about a 15 minute wait to get a table without a reservation.

Page, AZ And Lake Powell

Time: 2 Days

Our next home base for a couple days was Page, Arizona. Page is the town that's right on Lake Powell, and also is a great spot to see a ton of nearby attractions: Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon Dam, Antelope Canyon, and Lake Powell. Most of these trips and sights are only a couple hours of time, so you can squeeze a lot together in a short period of time.

This town has several mainstream hotels, a Wal-Mart, and lot's of food options for your family.

Marble Canyon/Lees Ferry

Marble Canyon is a great stop on the way to Page, AZ. Specifically, Lees Ferry is one of the only "beaches" that is accessible by car in the Grand Canyon area of the Colorado River. You can drive down and park in a picnic area right along the beach.

We made the trip, but we got caught in an afternoon monsoon that made it so we couldn't do anything but a car picnic. We would have stayed several hours, but this turned into a 30 minute experience.

Horseshoe Bend

Horseshoe Bend is located right outside of Page, AZ (literally 10 minutes down the road). While it's a National Park, the parking lot and trailhead are owned by the city of Page and you do have to pay to park (National Park passes don't work).

The walk/hike from the parking lot to the overlook only takes about 15 minutes (so 30 minutes round trip). The path is gravel and fairly flat, but it's very desolate. The only shade is two covers along the pathway (which get filled up with people). Plan for shade and water accordingly. 

Glen Canyon Dam

The Glen Canyon dam is another fun stop to check out. It's located right in town (and you cross the bridge in front of the dam when entering or leaving town). 

The dam has a visitors center that provides a great overlook of the dam, as well as a bunch of education about how the dam was built. Sadly, dam tours have been paused since Covid and it's unknown if they will ever return.

Either way, make this a stop and check it out. 

Lake Powell

Lake Powell and Glen Canyon recreation area are a lot of fun! If you're into water sports, I highly recommend spending some time on the lake. You can rent boats, jet skis, or take a dinner cruise like we did.

Glen Canyon recreation area has a lot of people boon docking and bringing all their toys to the lake.

The lake itself is prime for boating!

If you want to take a dinner cruise, you can book the Canyon Princess. It's a fun tour around the lake at sunset and dinner is served. The food is average catering food, but its fun to be out on the water! 

Bryce Canyon National Park

Time: 2 Days

Bryce Canyon is an amazing national park and surprisingly not as crowded as many of the parks we've visited. Bryce is known for it's unique canyons and coloring. You can hike and enjoy these views!

We opted to stay at Under Canvass for the glamping experience. That was a great choice for this park, even though the drive is about 15 minutes.

If you're coming in through Bryce Canyon City, you have to stop at Ruby's Inn. The gift shop and buffet are great choices. They have a breakfast buffet which is one of the best meals for the money on our whole road trip. 

For Bryce Canyon, the parking can be tough. We opted to park outside the park across from Ruby's Inn and take the free park shuttle in. Highly recommend as it made everything easy.

Our itinerary in the park:

Sunset Point: Our first stop in the park was Sunset Point, which as amazing lookout that gives you a great glance of the canyon. 

Navajo Loop Trail/Wall Street: We really wanted to hike so I took the kids on the Navajo Loop trail. This trail leads you down Wall Street (which is the picture below). It's really fun to hike through these canyons, but it is STEEP. You need to be able and in good physical condition to do these hikes. We simply did the round-trip and it took about an hour.

Rim Trail: At the top of the canyon is the Rim Trail. It's flat and paved along the edge of the canyon. We picked this up at Sunset Point after doing the Navajo Loop and walked down to Sunrise Point. You can also cut off this trail to go to the Bryce Canyon Lodge. 

Bryce Canyon Lodge: I think everyone should always stop at the National Park lodge in each park, so we did that here to get a snack and check it out. The lodge is beautiful and sometimes they have a taco truck going!

Zion National Park

Time: 2 Days

Zion is one of our family's favorite national parks. Every time we visit we find another fun area of the park to explore.

We've found that staying in Springdale is also awesome - the main drag (only drag) has a good amount restaurants and places to eat. 

The park itself is also easy because you simply hop on the shuttle in town to get to the park, then inside the park you hop on another shuttle that takes you to one of the stopping points. 

Our itinerary in the park. We've been here several times and don't try to overdo it. We got up "early" to grab one of the earlier shuttles to the Narrows, then went back to our hotel and took a nap, and then we did the Canyon Overlook Trail at sunset. 

We entered the park through the tunnel of the Zion Mount Carmel highway, which is one of the most beautiful ways to drive into the park. It's just iconic leaving the tunnel and seeing the park. 

The tunnel is also how you get to the Overlook Trail.

Narrows: The Narrows is the last shuttle stop (Temple of Sinawava). If you're not familiar, this is the iconic hike where you're hiking the riverbed of the Virgin River. In mid to late summer, the water levels are pretty low so you can get pretty far up without getting soaked. 

While some people rent special boots and hiking sticks, we simply pack water shoes in our backpack and swap from our normal hiking shoes to water shoes once you get to the river (there's a 10-15 minute walk/hike from the shuttle stop before you even get into the river). 

Wear shorts or items that you're comfortable getting wet. There are some deeper sections where you will get your shorts wet (or even shirt wet) if you want to keep going.

This hike is doable for kids, but realize that you may have to carry them through the deeper sections.

Canyon Overlook Trail: The Canyon Overlook trail is a shorter trail that takes you to a fun overlook over the valley. We did this right before sunset so we could enjoy the sunset at the overlook.  This hike is fun because it's not very difficult, but there are some really exciting features - like a bridge hanging off the cliff and some caves to climb into. Your kids need to watch their footings a bit, but it's not overly harrowing. 

Las Vegas, NV

Time: 2 Days

We ended our roadtrip in Las Vegas, which we've found to be fun for our kids. There's a lot of things to do and see outside of gambling. We purposely planned to watch the fireworks for the 4th of July at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. We booked a balcony room for this. 

Our kids had a blast sitting out and watching the fireworks!

While each trip varies, we've enjoyed the pools, comedy shows, jousting at Excalibur, watching the Bellagio fountain, checking out the massive arcade at Circus Circus. The list goes on for various things to do with kids!

Good To Know

Roadtrips are fun, but there's a lot of logistics that go into them (as any parent or travel planner knows).

Some things that are good to know (in no particular order):

• Get a National Park Annual Pass. Visiting three parks basically makes it pay for itself.
• Plan hotels that allow for laundry. It's why we like Hyatt Place and Springhill Suites. Resort hotels don't always have easy laundry facilities.
• If you like stopping at rivers and picnic spots, pack a blanket or Tommy Bahama chair to sit in.