My boyfriend and I will be visiting both Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks in early October! We will be staying in the area for a week, crashing at various places along the road trip. We plan to go to both the North and South Rim!
Given that we will be on the road for approximately 18 hours in total throughout the week, not to mention the hiking, we are pondering the most convenient and budget friendly way to keep ourselves fed. We have a Yeti cooler and a cooler backpack. Do you think it’s wise to bring both? We are kind of hesitant about checking the Yeti cooler for the flight fearing it might get damaged. I was thinking we could keep the big cooler in the car to store certain items and reserve the backpack cooler for sandwiches and snacks during the hike. We will obviously eat out at restaurants sometimes too but we don’t want or need to do that for every meal.
This will be both of our first times at these two national parks so any road tripping or travel tips for this area would be greatly appreciated!
Sounds like a great trip! Having a cooler in the car is definitely going to be super helpful for keeping costs down. Plus, big grocery stores aren’t all that frequent out there so stocking up before you leave is a great idea. I would weigh up the cost of checking the Yeti with just buying a cheap cooler in Walmart or something. We did this and bought one for about $35, then didn’t have to worry about it getting damaged, but it did the job.
In terms of tips, if you’re heading between the North and South Rim, I would highly recommend staying overnight at Cliff Dweller’s Lodge in Marble Canyon (you’ll drive right past it). It’s a gorgeous spot with an amazing restaurant. If you have time (and the funds) one of my absolute favourite things is kayaking the Colorado from Lee’s Ferry with Kayak Horseshoe Bend (that’s the company). You can get a backhaul service to take you all the way up the river, then kayak back to Lee’s Ferry over the course of the day, which means you’ll kayak around Horseshoe Bend. It was amazing! So quiet and peaceful and super surreal to be almost alone on the river. We packed a lunch and stopped off on a little beach in the kayak. Dreamy!