Williams, Arizona (76 – under 80)

As we left the campground in Moab, Utah we had a drive of a little over 320 kms to reach Williams in Arizona. We had heard the driving in Arizona was very easy but at that stage we didn’t know how close to Arizona (and all that easy driving) we were. The campground road led us to highway 163, we headed south and found the Arizona border about 150 metres down the road! And a lovely, easy day of driving ahead it was.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park around mid afternoon and saw many cars and people milling around. The campground is only a few years old and very well appointed - it’s all bitumen sealed and everyone has to put pads or timber under their stabilisers, the waste pipes must be set up on brackets, not lying on the ground etc. There is also a hotel attached to the group who own and built the campground and we were allowed to avail of their spa, pools and lounge area free of charge; they also have a restaurant. 

The Campground at sunrise





Piped music from the 1960s was played in the outdoor, covered BBQ areas, the laundry and toilet block – music from the 60s was apt as Williams was the last stretch of Route 66 of the Mother Road to be closed in 1984. The campground was exceptionally clean and it would be a real pleasure to stay there, with one possible exception. Adjacent to the hotel is the Grand Canyon Railway Station and the thought of trains blowing horns throughout the night wasn’t appealing at all; been there, done that! Hence we only booked there for a 3 night stay.



As I mentioned above, we were a little perplexed as to why so many families were milling about the hotel area adjacent to the railway station. After enquiring we discovered the families were there to get onboard a train called The Polar Express, which is an annual family event that brings people from all over the USA. The train concept follows the original book the subsequent movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks.

The train’s first adventure for the season started the night before we arrived and the next train trip wasn’t going to run till the following Friday night. Frankly, the excited looks on the children’s faces and the thought of this adventure as a family enticed us to stay for the entire week. So, unbeknown to our girls, we went straight to the reservation desk, booked our trip for what turned out to be some of the last available seats for the 8.30pm trip and extended our stay from 3 nights to 7 – we just hoped any passing night trains wouldn’t be too noisy.

The shady looking dudes on the
scissorlift are hanging Xmas lights
on the sign

Williams promotes itself as The Gateway to the Grand Canyon and is a place I’d highly recommend you visit if you also wanted to see a great section of the old Route 66 – it’s much better than the section of 66 we saw in Oklahoma. Williams is only a small township and has a wonderful feel to it, sort of like what you think the Mother Road should look like, if you know what I mean. 


The days were beautifully sunny and clear and temperatures were about 12 degrees, but overnights were down to around -6°C. It was perfect weather for sightseeing so we set off the following day to see the Grand Canyon. From Williams the southern section and view points of the Grand Canyon was a drive of about an hour (each way) and an additional 30 minutes plus stops to get to the Grand View point which is over half way to the eastern view points.

We had some trouble trying to find the 180 heading north to the Grand Canyon because, unbelievably, the Tom Tom didn’t have the Grand Canyon viewpoints as tourist destinations entered into its program. After driving the wrong way for about 20 miles, we did a U turn and back-tracked following the highway road signs.

We stopped at the visitor’s centre nearby the southern viewpoints to establish the location of the best vantage points. The Grand Canyon wasn’t visible from this visitor’s centre but we soon found out which way to walk by the ant-like trail of people following a concrete path. We joined the trail and soon saw the Canyon in all its glory.

The Grand Canyon, in a word is huge and has taken the Colorado River over 5 million years to slice through layer after layer to carve out the canyon to a depth today of about 5000 feet from the ground above where we stood. The canyons stretched as far as you could see and the Colorado’s ability to erode further downwards has been slowed now that it has reached the very foundation of the continent, the Basement Rocks.

Erosion and weathering of the layers in the canyon walls exposes records of time, however with the disappearance of so much rock, stories of the most recent 270 million years including the time of the dinosaurs has been deleted. Where Paleozoic Rocks rest directly on Basement Rocks, the contact represents a gap of 1,150 million years. Geologists call this gap the Great Unconformity.

However, as grand and beautiful as it is, both Grace and I felt that it lacked the intimacy of those views we saw in Utah – Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands, the Arches and Monument Valley. It’s understandable why it is one of the 7 Wonders of the Natural World, but we simply didn’t feel as “connected” as we had in Utah. Perhaps it was because we were at the same level as the canyon tops and the valley floors were so far away? Perhaps if we saw these icons in reverse order; we couldn’t “put our finger” on exactly why?

We walked for hundreds of metres around a path near the edge of the canyon and took many photos. The views, however, didn’t change all that much as a few hundred metres on the side of one of these monstrous canyon edges paled into insignificance. They were certainly magnificent views and spent well over an hour and a half walking about this section.

View from the Grand View

Wanting to see the canyons from a different perspective, we drove anticlockwise for another 30 minutes further around towards the eastern viewpoint, stopping at 3 spots on our way to the Grand View outlook. Each viewpoint provided spectacular views but the “disconnect” feeling didn’t go away - the vast size of Grand Canyon continued to contrast the lack of intimacy and personal touch which we had felt with the previous places in Utah, a feeling then of being part of nature and the location rather that observing it as an “outsider”.

As the time was getting late in the afternoon and we had to drive 1½ hours back to Williams, we decided to leave and return another day to see if we felt differently. On the way home we decided to have dinner out and went to the Route66 diner in the main street of Williams. It had the authentic 1960s look from both the outside and inside, however the service from our waitress was terrible.

Lousy service but we still had fun

Customers, including us were generally unsuccessful in gaining their attention even by waving hands and arms and I had to stand up, walk about and find our own menus. A door-to-door perfume salesman came in to the cafe half way through our meal and the entire wait staff wandered off to a corner for ages while sampling the products, completely oblivious to the patrons needs.

At the end of the meal we decided we were going to offer a very small tip, if any to express our feelings but much to our disappointment, an 18% gratuity was automatically added to the bill. Pretty much explained their “couldn’t-care-less” attitude.

The following few days were set aside for schoolwork with just a little bit time for exploring. We needed to buy pyjamas for each of us to wear on our Polar Express journey and decided the time was right for buying and setting up Xmas decorations in the Sierra. There was a Dollar shop at the edge of town that provided cheap but ideal decorations and we negotiated a great deal on the last white Xmas tree that was already decorated and still on display.

The -6°C nights quickly took their toll on the propane bottles, one of which needed refilling after the third night. I must say though, the ducted heating from the furnace did a very good job of warming the Sierra, particularly in the girl’s room. I set the temperature for 18 degrees in an attempt to minimise the propane usage, and that appeared (just guessing really as I have no data to compare it to!) to work as we only needed to refill the one bottle while we were there.

Sedona is a city situated about 100 kilometres south and it takes about 1½ hours to drive there. We had been advised by a number of people to see it and it was originally in our planned route to be there, however in our attempts to stay away from very cold and icy driving conditions, we had taken Sedona out as a destination.

The road to Sedona from Williams is quite straight-forward, an interstate highway at first and then after turning off onto a narrow single lane-each-way road, nothing at all interesting to see. After driving almost 85 kms we thought we’d wasted our time and started planning what we might do for the balance of the day following our visit there.

The road for the last 15 kms became a twisting, windy, steeply descending path that made us extremely glad we hadn’t taken the Sierra as well. We dropped 2,500 feet in elevation and quite sheer cliffs off the side of the road would’ve made our journey down with the full rig a very scary drive – we would have had to use much more than our allocated half of the road on blind corners to avoid the Sierra’s wheels getting perilously close to the edge. As it was, the Chev’s 22 foot length was a bit of a task at times. On the bright side, the views were fantastic and once we reached the valley floor, the terrain flattened out and beautiful autumn coloured trees lined each side of the road.

Sedona initially reminded us very much of Santa Fe with adobe styled houses on the outskirts. As we entered the small city we found a mix of adobe and more modern designs and most was single storey. It was quite unique and appeared to be a delight to explore.

We sought out the local visitor’s centre and while there met an Australian couple from the Gold Coast, the first Australians we’d met in our travels doing what we are doing. After chatting for over 30 minutes, comparing notes of what to see in various locations and sharing places to stay, we discovered they had flown to Vancouver and had re-entered the USA on new visas. Our growing dilemma of what we needed to do to “refresh” our visas before Feb 19th became more clouded. We know we have to leave and re-enter the USA, but were advised we couldn’t travel to a contiguous country (Canada) and then re-enter to receive a new visa, yet this couple had done exactly that!

Prior to us deleting our planned trip to Sedona, I had earmarked a four-wheeled drive adventure into the Red Rock Hills that surrounded Sedona. Now that we were there and had the available time, much to Grace’s angst we decided to book a trip with a company called Pink Jeep Tours. They’re the original local company that started these tours and have small jeeps that can take up to 8 people in each. The path/goat track they negotiate is over rocks, steps and quite steep (33 degrees was the steepest) slopes.

The trip was booked for 12.30 and was last about 1½ hours which left us about half an hour to explore their shop and buy lunch before we left. Grace felt as if she was waiting for the executioner as we sat on a bench awaiting our driver. Josh appeared right on time and introduced himself – he turned out to have a great sense of humour and delighted in frightening Grace even more when driving quickly towards a steep drop, then stopping to proceed at a safe speed.

Of course he started the trip by telling us to be on the lookout for the dangerous Californian Black Rattlesnake that falls out of trees which are very prevalent here. They’re very venomous and he had one drop into his Jeep “last week” that bit a woman who needed to be taken out of the valley by helicopter. It naturally follows that I had to tell him about the danger of the Australian Bunyips – as you’re aware, they have a shocking bite and rabies is only mild when you compare the effects from Bunyip bite!!

We were very lucky to be the only people to travel in the jeep and took some terrific photos and videos, a number of which Grace doesn’t particularly want to re-visit as they’re not some of her best travel shots – squealing and hiding her head in a blanket on the seat behind Josh! I’ll have private viewings available on our return to Sydney.

Sedona was a terrific place, and one we’d love to return to and continue our exploration. Part of one day simply wasn’t long enough and late afternoon arrived much too quickly. I didn’t want to drive the very narrow roads back to the plateau in the dark, so we left Sedona with the sun very low on the horizon at about 5pm for our 90 minute journey back to Williams.



The platform during the day



Friday night finally arrived and our journey to the North Pole on the Polar Express was imminent. We all dressed in our pyjamas and even Chantelle’s and Rochelle’s bears were dressed in Christmas clothes. The train was due to depart the station at 8.30pm and we were advised we should be there at least 15 minutes beforehand.





We drove from the Sierra to the train station car park, not because of the distance (about 400 metres), but because of the temperature. At 10pm when we were due to return to the station, it would be around -2°C, not the greatest weather for pyjamas and dressing gowns! Hundreds of excited families were already gathered at the station and lined the train station platform. In fact, we were surprised at the number of people there as we were told by a local that there should only be a few carriages, an “intimate trip” they said.

The train wasn’t at the platform when we first arrived, but at about 8.20 we heard the whistle blowing and saw the light from the engine. Our excitement rose and the noises of all the children and families was palpable. I videoed the train’s arrival and was surprised at its length. Far from being an “intimate few” carriages, there were 20 in all, each seating 120 people – no wonder the noise of the excited families was palpable.

The arriving train carried the families from the first visit to Santa and the windows were full of excited faces waving and yelling and at the end of each carriage were people dressed in chef’s hats waving to us, asking if the children we ready to leave to see Santa’s workshops. Everyone waited till the first group disembarked and were lined up ready to be ushered to our allocated seats.

All the seats faced forward and the seats on both sides of the train seated 2 people. We ended up being seated in front of each and I was supposed to be sitting opposite the girls, however the seat in front of us didn’t have a view outside and was left vacant, so I moved to that as watching the family’s faces was more fun – there was still plenty to see outside out the windows on the opposite side.

With long blasts from the train’s horn we left the station. The train conductor dressed in the same uniform as that from the movie moved through our carriage clipping our tickets whilst a couple of chefs slowly moved through giving everyone a hot (warm) chocolate drink and choc-chip cookie. Once everyone had their drinks, the head chef got on a microphone and told us he was about to play a CD which was the original Polar Express story and if we had the book (we did), we could read along with it. Chantelle and Rochelle sat the book between them and listen and read as the train headed for the North Pole.

A very colourful illuminated sign beside the railway track with a huge arrow indicated we were on the correct path to see Santa’s workshop and as the CD story ended, we were told by the head chef that if we looked out the windows on both sides we could see Santa’s village coming into view. Santa’s workshop was to be on the right side of the train so everyone gathered on that side with cameras poised.

And there it was, a very bright little town illuminated by tens of thousands of Christmas lights, complete with snow, elves, reindeer, buildings and Santa sitting in a chair outside his workshop. The train came to a stop just after the township and slowly started the return journey back along the same track. The opportunity to take additional photos was there – but wait.....Santa’s no longer in his chair.....where could he be??

The return journey was filled with Christmas carols that everyone had to sing as loud as possible. If you weren’t singing, the head chef came to you and asked you to accompany him to the front of the carriage to sing the first few lines of the next carol in front of everyone – it was a great incentive to sing as loud as you could!

Then, great excitement as Santa, complete with his genuine beautiful white bushy beard and white hair arrived at our carriage door. He walked through the carriage with a couple of helpers handing out bells to all the children and stopped briefly to pose for photos. All too quickly he had passed through our carriage and stood at the door at the far end, waved farewell and with a loud “Merry Christmas” and a “Ho Ho” disappeared into the next carriage. We continued to sing carols till we arrived back at the station, this time with the aid of the sound of many Xmas bells.

With a brisk walk back to the car and great memories from the night just passed, we headed back to the Sierra to prepare for our drive to Las Vegas the following morning.