Adventure Vacations with the Yelton Family: A Day at the Grand Canyon-Wild West Show

9:30 AM Indiana time we were up and at 'em! This was it! This was the day! We were about to see the landmark that everyone has to see once in their life! Bring on the Grand Canyon!

We began with a very brisk power walk to McDonalds in order to avoid the feed your face and cram in as much as possible food bar that had a $20.00 per person price tag at the hotel. For $20.00 we could get a huge breakfast at McD's for all four of us. We just had to walk a little ways down the road. It wasn't far at all, but......there were no sidewalks to get from the hotel to the other side of the road. Obviously, we are the only smart people who figured out where to go for breakfast. Or maybe it was just a deterrent to make you stay at the hotel! Everyone ran across the gravelly, steep ditch and up the other side of the road......except the mom. I was still standing on the opposite shore wondering how I was going to get across without spraining my ankle or throwing my knee out of the socket. Mike came back and saved me. :)

Now in the light of the morning we could see a big Mountain to the North. The town of Williams is partially run down and partially fixed up. It was a booming town on Route 66 back in the day. Of course, it was the place tourists got on the train to ride up the mountain to The Grand Canyon. When the highway put Route 66 out of business and everyone had their own cars to drive to the Grand Canyon, Williams, AZ fell out of favor and business. GET THIS: Williams, AZ is actually the town Disney Imagineers used in the hit movie, Cars! You can tell. It really has that look about it!

So we hurried a few blocks down the street to the McDonalds and ordered up some big breakfasts. We hurried so much that we actually had some time to relax. Alas, we relaxed too long and had to leave in a hurry! Why are we always stupid that way! I took a picture of the kids under the Welcome to Williams sign.

Now we were really, really late. The train ride starts with a Wild West Show before you board the train. We had been told that it was really great, so we didn't want to miss it. We started hurrying.....Suddenly, I thought I was going to faint. I was breathing really, really hard. I was flabbergasted because we were just walking fast! Surely I wasn't that out of shape! Mike reminded me that we were at a much higher elevation now. Wow. I guess I am glad I live in Indiana! I would be late for everything if I couldn't walk fast without panting!

We were just a couple of minutes late for the show. We quickly dodged in and got seats on the bleachers. I thought the show was just going to be on the platform where you get on the old train, but it was actually a set that was a stage way back in Timbuktu. We did make it to the train platform on time, just not to the "hidden" stage.

This show was a hoot! Whoever wrote the script was a master writer! There were horses, guns, cowboys, and a wild west town. The premise of the skit was that the sheriff had told the local knuckleheads to quit playing cards, since it always got them into trouble. They couldn't resist despite the sheriff's orders and found themselves in a heap of trouble when they shot a guy who had a great hand of cards that included 5 aces! (Everyone knows that a regular deck of cards only has 6 aces in the whole thing!) They blamed the shootout on one of the audience members.

The trusty sheriff got to the bottom of the problem, even having the victim replay his fall for a guy in the audience, who supposedly didn't catch it on film the first time. The victim did a dramatic fall a second time....but landed in a pile of poo. So he tried again and did a dramatic fall for a third time! We had great laughs at this show. The guys putting on the show were hilarious and kept us laughing.