Train ride to the Grand Canyon

The train ride to the Grand Canyon is a two hour ride up and a two hour ride back, through beautiful scenery. We were all so excited about it - check us out first thing in the morning.

Fresh as a daisy!!

These pics are cool - they look like we superimposed the kids onto one of those blue screens.

The morning entertainment - a guitar player/singer. Ella loved him and took about 42 pictures of him!!

Then there was our "PSA" (I'm still not sure what that stands for). Let's just call him "Relentless", because throughout both train rides he was relentless in his pursuit of a tip. He stood at the front of the cabin and talked on the microphone non-stop. I could pretty much tell you his life story. He and his wife live "off-the-grid", in their RV. They are gypsys, "which means residence-challenged." They used to live in California but couldn't afford the $6,000 a year property tax. He has been working in Northern Arizona for the last three summers, and he could tell you anything you want to know about (and a lot more you don't). Like, if you have your water delivered, it's 6.5 cents a gallon, but if you drive your home over to fill up, it's only 2.5 cents a gallon. He even explained his logic for his incessant talking - when he took this train ride four years ago, the PSA was a teenage girl who only handed out the soft-drinks and didn't tell you about anything. Oh, how I would long for that teenage PSA.

He had told many passengers about the best way to spend your time at the South Rim, and it was this - "eat, walk, ride". Eat at the restaurant first, before it got crowded, then walk up to Yavapai point, then ride the bus back down to the train station. He even made us repeat it several times - "eat, walk, ride." Then he proceeded to explain, in great detail, every restaurant at the South Rim.

Before we got off the train, he took a show of hands about how many people would be making the return trip with him (which was most of us). Then he said, and I quote, "if any of you people not making the return trip with me would like to express your gratitude, I will be standing right outside the train." This instantly threw red flags up for me, but I was still excited and I chose to ignore it.