Grand Canyon Vacation One of Our Best Family Vacations

by Chaplain Paul Slater
(San Diego, CA)

Grand Canyon Vacation On Best Family Vacation List

Grand Canyon Vacation On Best Family Vacation List

Grand Canyon Vacation Trip One Of Our Best Family Vacations

Family vacation trips were often given to us as travel related gifts.


While a small church, one generous congregation often honored us with travel packages in their pastor appreciation gifts, helping us financially underwrite the cost of our family vacation travels.

So it was that a memorable Arizona Vacation arose out of the generosity of an individual I will describe as a generous pastor appreciation champion.

Our family had another destination, a family reunion in Riudoso, New Mexico. We had already spent our family vacation budget on a trip to our church's national conference in Indianapolis. Our small church had already raised funds for us to attend as a family.

Our son was in high school and our daughter in middle school and we wanted them to experience our denomination's influence from a wider perspective than just the small church of 50 they attended because Dad was pastor.

Those family outings will be the subjects of other best family vacation stories so I will get back to telling about our Arizona camping trip.

Grand Canyon Vacation Memories

This was not our first trip to the Grand Canyon but it was to the North Rim. Not as many vacationers get to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon because if I remember right, you have to travel quite a distance to go around the great canyon to arrive there.

Understand that we were taking what amounted to a budget Grand Canyon trip. Thanks to the generous pastor appreciation cash gift, we were able to cover the
travel expenses doing what some call traveling on the cheap.

By the way, our pastor appreciation champion simply handed me a crisp $100 bill, which at that time was worth much more than now.

His instructions were that we use travel cash gift when we got tired of tent camping and needed a change of pace motel stay.

Why Our Grand Canyon Trip Qualifies As A Best Family Vacation

Now the majesty of God's creation would certainly be something to remember, that is not one of the reasons. Why being on our top rated family vacation list has to do with deepening family relationships.

  • Our children bonded for one of the first times on this Arizona vacation trip.

    Sibling rivalry had been part of our family makeup until this trip. Our football oriented son and our literature loving daughter began to interact as we traveled instead of reacting to each other as previous vacation trips.

  • Our family began to develop what I call a mindset of blessing, an attitude of gratitude for all that God has given us.

  • And finally this favorite family vacation memory taught us that even when cash strapped, a family can create vacation memories through creative frugality.

    In other words, by camping in a tent and eating simple brown bag meals, a family can make still make destination vacations a part of those "remember the time when" conversations that last a lifetime.

    Looking back on our Grand Canyon Vacation Trip, we still consider it to be one of our best family vacations, so we still enjoy sharing the memories many years later.


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