At literally four seconds past the hour, we were calling every open tire place in the city. We finally found a shop that had the size we needed (with the appropriate load rating), but the tires were of a relatively unknown brand. There is someone else in one of our online VW Eurovan groups who put these specific tires on his van and has been happy with them, but it was hard to find any information on them otherwise.
Although they wouldn't be our top choice for tires, they were pretty inexpensive, and he could install them that day. If I waited for the more expensive tires to be ordered, the amount of money I would spend on a hotel room would far exceed what I would spend on the purchase and installation of the cheaper tires, not to mention all the fees we would continue to incur to change all of our future reservations if we had to keep bumping our trip dates around. So we decided to just have them put on, knowing that we will buy another set of tires in the coming months (I KNOW, RIGHT??). All of our recent repair issues and expenditures were not necessarily out of the ordinary -- we got such a steal on the car, we were ready and willing to invest some money into it -- it's more the timing of it all, and how much more difficult it is to repair when you're in the middle of a trip versus at home.
So we went for it and had them installed.
The kids waiting patiently.
Up on the lift!
These are what they took off. Tires are not supposed to look like this whatsoever.
These should be flat, and not bulging. Oy vey!
An hour or so later, we were in the clear and on our way! And holy cow what a difference the tires made. The car can actually ride relatively quietly!
Thumbs up leaving Flagstaff.
I know, I know, you're asking, when are the real pictures going to arrive? Now. FINALLY.
We made it! Our plan A was to drive to the Desert View Campsite inside the park and see if there were any walk-up sites available. Lo and behold, there were, so we snagged a spot there for the evening.
After we had checked it out and officially reserved our spot, we headed down the road to peek at the canyon.
This was my very first time visiting the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful, yes, but I think what is the most amazing about it is its sheer size. It's almost incomprehensible, and it is certainly not able to be captured in a photograph.
The Grand Canyon allows dogs on paved trails, and since that's all we could do anyway with the stroller, Ralph joined us the entire time. Dare I say he was almost more popular with the other sightseers than the canyon itself. I lost count how many people stopped us about him, or said hi, or had their kid run away from them to come give him a scratch.
From the Desert View lookout we drove the 30 miles west toward Grand Canyon Village. The Grand Canyon gets an A++ for accessibility. We didn't ride any of their shuttle buses so I can't speak specifically to how accommodating those are, but we were able to get our car where we needed to go even without using her speciall National Parks Access Pass. The trails along the rim were wide and paved and all of the lookout points that we went to had ramps that allowed us to get all the way to the edge.
As expected, it was packed with people, a surprising number of whom spoke French.
The altitude was exhausting for everyone (it's over 7000' in some spots). I have never felt so winded walking up four stairs in my life. Ralph hitched a ride in the stroller with SB, which brought even more attention to him from others.
At the aptly named Grandview Point.
There were lots of places to climb down to pretty easily, but they were not for us and our wiggle worm.
We headed back to the campsite, made dinner, and went to bed. There were only four massive bug incidents on my part before I finally went to sleep.
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