Hey there! Back at the end of April we took a trip via Amtrak with the Traveling Homeschoolers. This was our second rail journey with them and it was just as fun the second time around! We flew to Chicago the day before we were due to board the train.
We stayed at Homewood Suites by Hilton which is right across the street from Sugar Factory restaurant and behind (shares the building with) Eataly Chicago.
Me in our room.
We had a nice dinner with awesome desserts at Sugar Factory. It's a bit pricey but it is Chicago!
The boys love taking the train. For me it's a little cramped for sleeping (we were in the sleeper cars) but it's a great way to travel and spend time playing games, chatting or just relaxing and letting someone else do the driving! The food is pretty good too. It's not airline food for sure.
Waiting for the train.
Playing games with friends in the observation car.
We were on the train from 3 pm Monday to around 10 pm Tuesday night. Once we arrived in Flagstaff, where the temps were starting to plummet, we boarded a bus that took us to our hotel in Williams AZ. We stayed one night in Williams, which has a downtown that reminds me of Radiator Springs from the Disney movie Cars. It was so cute! Of course it would have been so much better if the weather had cooperated. There were blizzard like conditions as you can see from the pics. We decided we were going to venture out even though the weather was bad because we were to get on another bus to the Grand Canyon that afternoon. We are definitely more adventurous than our children wish we were!
This photo was taken just a couple of hours after the one above in the same spot. It's crazy how different the weather was!
On the way to the Grand Canyon South Rim village we stopped at Desert View Tower. This was our first real glimpse of the Canyon.
We boarded the bus again and headed to our hotel. We stayed at the Kachina Lodge. The view from our room was quite spectacular!
The amenities are pretty basic but clean. I am a very picky person about hotel rooms and these were fine. They are definitely dated though it does look like they have tried to update them.
We had breakfast every morning at the Harvey House Cafe in the Bright Angel Lodge. The food was good and decently priced.
We spent a lot of our time here hiking and walking. We did attend a couple of the Ranger education programs. They were doing training at the time so they programs they were offering were a scaled down version of what they normally offer. That was a little disappointing but we found other ways to keep ourselves busy.
The views from the South Rim of the Canyon are beautiful. We took lots and lots of pictures, 100's actually, but I will only share a few of them.
We left the Grand Canyon early Saturday morning and boarded a bus to Las Vegas where we dropped off our luggage at our hotel and back tracked to Hoover Dam. Hoover dam does not allow buses with luggage which was kind of a pain for us but worth the trip back.
Part of our visit to Hoover Dam included the Power Plant tour. We took an elevator that holds about 80-100 people 54 floors down. Yes, 54 FLOORS DOWN. For those who are claustrophobic (like me) this causes great anxiety. I wanted to do the tour so I just sucked it up and figured it wouldn't be too long.
At this point we were informed that the elevators were having issues and that we were going to be delayed in finishing the tour. After about 10 minutes I started to have some serious anxiety. It doesn't show in the picture below but I was trying hard to stay calm for all the kids that were with us. Me freaking out would have just made the situation worse.
Finally they decided to have us walk up 2 floors to the next part of the tour. This is where we were looking down into the Power Plant. It's pretty cool and those things are enormous!
We ended up taking the original elevator from when the dam was built back up to the top. It only holds about 20 people so getting back was a bit slow. Plus the old elevators aren't nearly as fast as the new ones. I was proud that I managed not to have an complete anxiety attack down there.
It's beautiful there but it was a lot hotter than we had experienced just a few hours before in the Grand Canyon. It got even hotter when we got to Las Vegas!
A lot of the families on our trip were to leave Saturday night or Sunday from Las Vegas. We chose to stay an additional day so we could spend some time on the strip. Our hotel was not on the strip but they had a shuttle that would take us 24 hours a day, all we had to do was sign up for it! We took the shuttle in early Sunday morning and walked the strip. We started at Mandalay Bay and walked down to the Bellagio then back to Mandalay Bay to go to the Aquarium. We did lots of shopping along the way!
After hiking miles in the days before and walking up and down the strip we were exhausted so we headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day by the pool relaxing. We needed a break from our vacation!
Thanks for stopping by!
Chris
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