About Grand Canyon
No photograph, film, or description prepares you for the first step to the Grand Canyon's rim: a chasm a mile deep and up to eighteen across, banded in reds, buffs, and violets, running to the horizon in both directions. The Colorado River carved it through two billion years of rock — nearly half of Earth's history exposed in one view — and the scale simply refuses to fit inside the eye.
The South Rim serves the classic experience: the Rim Trail's procession of viewpoints from Mather Point to Hermits Rest, the historic El Tovar and Hopi House of the park's golden age, and Desert View's stone Watchtower with its river panorama. Sunset and sunrise are the canyon's daily theater, when the buttes light like embers and shadows pour into the side gorges. Those who venture below the rim — even a short way down Bright Angel Trail — enter a different world, where the canyon's silence and size become almost physical.
Pavlus Recommendations
How our planners would spend a day in Grand Canyon.
Watch a rim sunset
Hopi Point and Mohave Point stage the canyon's nightly spectacle — temples and buttes glowing crimson while the gorge floods with blue shadow. Arrive early; leave changed.
Step below the rim
Even a mile down Bright Angel Trail transforms the canyon from panorama to place — walls rising overhead, mule trains passing, and the crowds left behind at the top.
Drive to Desert View
The eastern rim road ends at Mary Colter's 1932 Watchtower, where the Colorado finally shows itself far below in a great silver bend — the canyon's best river view by car.
Tours That Visit Grand Canyon
Book any of these through Pavlus and pay less — never a service fee. Browse the full catalog → or call 800-528-9300 for your unadvertised Pavlus price.