One of the main things we wanted to do when we drove from DC to California was stop and visit the Grand Canyon. Toby had never seen it, and I was in fourth grade the last time I saw it. But our moving truck arrived earlier than planned, so while we did get to drive through Zion National Park, we missed the Grand Canyon.

We finally made it to northern Arizona earlier this month.

I took approximately a zillion photos, and I am going to do a separate post about our second day and another about where to eat and some good places to stay in the Flagstaff area. But today I wanted to share a few shots of the canyon, tell you a bit about our trip, and show you what I wore the first day.

We stayed in Flagstaff, which is about an hour and a half away, so it was late morning by the time we got up there. We first parked at the visitor’s center and hiked along the rim trail, then took one of the free buses back to our car.

But we wanted to actually hike into the Grand Canyon, too, which is why I wore workout pants and braided my hair to keep it out of my face. After lunch, we parked the car near the Bright Angel Trailhead and hiked down about 1.7 miles.

The Bright Angel Trail is the most popular hiking trail at the Grand Canyon, and it has several rest stops along the way to the bottom. We decided to turn around at the first one, because everyone kept telling us it would take two to three times longer to go back up than it took to hike down.

I generally dislike hiking downhill, and Toby had stopped several times to make sure I was drinking water and to take lots of photos and videos, so it took us a while to hike down. Hiking back up was much more difficult, but it only took us about 10 more minutes on the way up as it did on the way down. And the braid was definitely a good plan — the weather was beautiful, but I did get pretty hot on the way back up.

Because we got back up to the rim faster than we had planned, we had time to walk around and enjoy some drinks and the sunset after we had changed clothes for dinner.

I’m sure you can tell from these photos that the sunset was gorgeous, but pictures really don’t do this amazing place justice.

My day/hiking outfit: T-shirt: J. Crew (old, but other cute ones are on sale here, here and here), Yoga pants: Target, Hiking boots: Vasque, Backpack: Roxy (old, similar here), Sunglasses: Kate Spade
Night/dinner outfit: Sweater: Gap (old, similar on sale), Thermal shirt: American Eagle (similar), Jeans: Gap, Necklace: Kate Spade outlet

Toby’s hiking oufit: T-shirt: Lucky Brand, Pants: American Eagle, Flannel: Abercrombie (old).
Toby’s night outfit: Flannel: Lucky Brand (similar), Vest: Mountain Hardware (old, similar)