I am planning a 3 week trip from NY to the Grand Canyon area for September 2008. We will be in a 36' Class "A". My question is can I see the normal tourist sites by either using a shuttle or parking the RV with the buses? Or will we be missing a lot by not bringing the car along?
Besides the fuel considerations, we will be leaving the RV in Vegas or Phoenix for winter storage. That means the Dingy gets stored also.
The same question for the National Parks to the north for 3 week trip in the spring of 2009. Then home.
it's hard to answer the question with a yes or no.
no, you don't need a car to view the grand canyon. the shuttle buses take care of that just fine. you will need to make a reservation for Trailer Village campground in the park, and do it several months in advance.
so yes, I suppose you could make a trip out there without the dingy.
as for the other parks..
yellowstone and glacier both offer shuttle/sight seeing buses.
I don't know if Bryce and Zion and Escalante and Capitol Reef have sight seeing buses.
Don't miss Escalante (highway 12), but doing it in a motorhome might be a little hairy if narrow roads with steep drops offs bother you. we did it in the car.
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Now I can’t give an answer for you but I would not go for a weekend without the TOAD.
Too much to see, too much to do, to try to do it in just the Coach. If you are leaving the RV in Vegas I HOPE you fly out often to take a few trips between the two planned excursions.
Take a look at this web site for a few places you will need the toad to see.
In Zion the tour bus is the only way you are allowed to go into most areas.
The tour busses are fine for the Grand Canyon area proper, but if you care to see nearby POI's like Monument Valley or the Painted Desert you may want to have other means. If I read you correctly you're just talking about towing to and from Las Vegas or Phoenix.
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In Memphis for example, we used the T.O. Fuller State Park camp ground (a very good CG) as a base and went to Graceland, Tunica, the Underground Railway museum, the Pink Palace Museum,etc. and in Little Rock we used Toad Suck COE camp ground (a great CG) to see all the attractions in the Little Rock except for THAT presidential library.
That is how we use our Toad. We find a base camp ground then use the Toad to explore, to go to the store, to go out to eat, etc. The RV is too big to drive around in a lot of places. Not impossible, but hard to do. For example, finding an RV parking spot near Beale St, the Underground Railway Museum, or the Lorraine Motel in Memphis would have pretty close to impossible and would have involved driving up and down narrow streets.
If you are just driving flat out from point A to point B, setting up, having dinner, then calling it a night without leaving the camp ground to explore or see attractions then you might not want to take the toad. Depends on how you set up your trip.
* This post was
edited 11/01/07 02:22pm by MadJayhawk *
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Where we have overnighted.
Ours goes everywhere with us. Not only more sightseeing, but in the event of a breakdown you're not stuck. If you haven't been out west, it's big and lonesome in lots of places. Bite the bullet and take the toad.
We did a 2 1/2 week trip to Yellowstone in a small Class C once. Sure would have been nice to have a toad. It's a pain in the you-know-where to unhook & decamp every time we wanted to sightsee, or needed to get groceries or firewood, then set up camp again when we returned to our site.
We did the Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico stint in 2006. 4,500 miles on the MH and 2,000 additional miles on the toad. It would have been hard to do without the Toad. It was 4 weeks for us. Whatever you decide, enjoy it.
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I'm sure you will miss the toad and miss some of the sites without it. However, have to ask the question if you have ever gone without the toad before and didn't have a problem being without it. If so, you can easily see Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion without a toad as they all have a shuttle. The one for Bryce isn't as good as the others, but should be enough. You will need to make reservations several months out if you will be traveling between mid-June and early September to make sure you get a site within shuttle reach. As mentioned, Grand Canyon would be Trailer Village, Zion would be the sites in Watchman (electric sites just in the NP), and Ruby's Inn for Bryce Canyon. All of these are within easy walking of a shuttle stop. Not sure what else you were wanting to see, but those should take care of most of your time. Other places you go, you may need to use a tour bus (especially in Yellowstone) or figure on renting a car for a couple of days.
One thing to think about though, if you don't take the toad on this trip, how will you get the toad there for the next trip when you may really want to have it. If necessary, you could always have the car shipped back home. That would cost about $600-$700, so while expensive, may be an alternative.
However, if you don't need the toad when you get back home, take the toad with you. Better to have and not want then want and not have.
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