verybuckeye

We are planning our spring break trip for next year, and need some advice. We will be travelling in early April. Our plans thus far are:

Sat - Fly into Las Vegas
Sun - Red Rock Canyon and Vegas sites
Mon - Hoover Dam, travel to Williams AZ
Tues & Wed - Grand Canyon - Bright Angel Cabins
Thurs - either travel on up to the Utah canyons - Bryce and Zion and loop on around to Vegas OR back into Sedona, Flagstaff, etc area and return to Vegas
Sun - Fly home from Vegas

If we do the northern loop through Utah, we would drive the whole way.

If we decide to do the Sedona/Flagstaff visit, we would take the GC Railway into and out of Williams, and resume the car trip from there.

We will be travelling with our 2 young adult children. Any advice or input???

Thanks!
VeryBuckeye

USNR

You say you plan to drive to Williams, take the Grand Canyon Railway to the Grand Canyon South Rim and Bright Angel Cabins. Is someone in your group going to drive from Williams up to the Canyon? Frankly, I think you could save yourself a lot of time, money, and grief by driving from Las Vegas, skip staying in Williams (a really nothing place in the middle of nowhere), go direct north from Williams to GC. The railway trip is NOT scenic -- mostly rolling sagebrush country. If you simply MUST take a train trip, why not (while staying in Sedona) drive over to Clarkdale and take the Verde Canyon Railway trip -- really pretty, untouched-looking country. It will be an afternoon well spent. They have a web site for fares, times, etc. Incidentally, from your name I presume you are from Ohio. Distances in the West are MUCH greater than in the Midwest. For example, from Sedona to Las Vegas is more than 300 miles, a drive of almost six hours. I suspect you are biting off more than you can chew, with all that driving, driving, driving.

verybuckeye

Thanks for the input - yes, we're from Ohio, so we're accustomed to interstate highways! If we drive into the GC, would the northern canyon loop still be do-able? Or, since it will be April, should we concentrate on the old west south of the canyon? We don't want to spend the whole trip driving, but we do want to see as much as we can...

USNR

You will want to check with the National Park Service, but I believe the North Rim of the GC will not be open to visitors in early April. It's higher than the South Rim by about 1,000 ft. and gets snow later. The road connecting Jacob Lake with the North Rim is closed from October to May most years.

caligirl56

We are visiting Bryce, Zion and Arches NPs in late April this year. So I have researched what's open and what's not for late April--since you are going in early April--you would want to double check that the following is true!

The North Rim of the Canyon is pretty much always closed until mid-May as far as I can tell.

Zion and Arches National Parks are open year around--and I would imagine they're less crowded in early April than they would be later in the spring (I suppose some hikes might close depending on snow conditions at higher elevations).

Bryce is also open, I think--but my understanding is that you will need very warm clothes since it is at such a high elevation.

If you are at the south Rim of the Grand Canyon--and touring that part of Arizona, there are Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly--I think they are also open year around.