Save 10-20 hours of travel research in two minutes. Experience the best of the Grand Canyon without spending hours behind the computer.
Use our easy-to-follow instructions, including the top sites, arrival times, images, and custom maps - no one will know it's your first visit!
North Rim, South Rim, East Rim & Page, or want to see it all? We've got the right guide for you!
Enjoy the best dining spots and lodging options, complete with area breakdowns and top recommendations for every budget.
Easily pick which activities are perfect for your group with our star ratings, detailed descriptions, and estimated time frames.
The car ride can be just as fun as the activities as you listen to the interesting and fun audio stories.
ONLY $59 – $180 VALUE
Experience the Grand Canyon like never before with our ultimate bundle! Get itineraries and audio tours for the South Rim, North Rim, Grand Canyon East, and Page—plus exclusive bonuses: a Grand Canyon West itinerary and a comprehensive Grand Canyon Overview Guide with 3 road trip plans.
2-3 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and Rainbow Bridge + amazing hikes and water adventures.
2-3 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including hikes, the best viewpoints, walking tour of the village, the Grand Canyon Railway, and mule rides.
1 Day Itinerary & Audio Guide including Bright Angel Point, Cape Royal, Angel’s Window + the best hikes and viewpoints
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Why just visit the Grand Canyon when you can easily see Utah’s National Parks too!
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Hey, We’re Matt and Cheryl and we are on a mission to help people have amazing vacations. Not only do we write easy-to-follow itineraries, but we love to share interesting stories in our audio guides about all of our favorite places!
We live in Utah, just four hours away from awesome national parks like Zion and Yellowstone, and have spent our lives exploring the West and the Rocky Mountains. We often travel with both sets of our retired parents (they like each other!) and our four teenagers (who like to travel…sometimes).
We met in a history of Utah class at Weber State University and tied the knot in 2002. Matt worked for Social Security and taught adjunct history classes at our alma mater. Cheryl taught special education for 28 years and continues to volunteer by teaching a weekly dance fitness class.
We took a shot at our dream in 2020 and started making YouTube videos about the national parks we know so well. We now have over 20 million views and have sold over 24,000 guides. We are delighted to help travelers fulfill dreams of their own!
We love trying out all the activities and working with local experts to give the best, most up-to-date travel advice out there.
At We're in the Rockies, we believe in education and donate 5% of the proceeds of your purchase to the Gene Sessions History Scholarship to make education affordable to future park rangers and history teachers.
Watch Cheryl show you how to plan out your travel day in minutes.
For visiting the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, we recommend staying at the South Rim, Tusayan, or Williams, AZ.
For the North Rim, you can stay in Jacob Lake, AZ.
Page is a great location for Grand Canyon East and has plenty of lodging options.
Kanab, UT is a great home base for visiting the North Rim, Page, Zion, and Bryce Canyon.
We recommend switching locations if you want to go to the North and South rims.
You can do the days in the itinerary in any order you wish.
For the South Rim and East Area & Page, March through November works well. We love to visit the 3rd week of April- not to put too fine a point on it! It’s nice and cool and crowds are at a minimum; this is especially important if you plan to visit Grand Canyon West (Skywalk).
For the North Rim, anytime in the mid-May through mid-October window is great. The North Rim gets very few visitors and is closed the rest of the year.
We have spent a lot of time at all 4 areas of the Grand Canyon, checking out the viewpoints, hiking, and doing almost all of the activities.
We travel with both sets of our retired parents and our 4 kids (who are now teens), so we have a pretty good radar on the interests of most types of travelers.
We recommend what we believe are the absolute best spots inside and outside the park and give backup options for longer hikes or things that cost.
We give star ratings and approximate prices to help you decide which activities are the best value for you!
We are of the mindset that you have a plan, so you can be flexible.
We lay out what we believe are the best activities for your time and money, but we all have different preferences.
Because each activity listed has a star rating, approximate time frame, and cost, you’ll easily be able to adjust to best suit your group’s interests.
We surveyed our customers and they reported that our guides saved them 10-20 hours of trip planning research, on average.
Although much of the information included in these guides can be found with significant research, these guides combine what you need to know into one place and it is from a source committed to giving you the best information.
These guides cost us over $11,433 to create when you combine travel expenses, map creation, and formatting. In addition, we have spent hundreds of hours visiting this park and doing additional research. The audio guide alone was over 100 hours of labor (but of course, a labor of love!)
Many of our travelers enjoy the confirmation that they have already created a good plan and may even find a thing or two to add to it.
Other travelers may find that our plan is similar to what they had already pieced together on their own.
If you’ve already spent hours planning, you may not find maximum value in this guide.
Yes! We travel with our 4 children and both sets of our parents. Although not every activity is for everyone, there are always backup suggestions.
We write these guides so all the work you should need to do is obtain your lodging and reservations. We include maps, the time needed to complete drives and activities, and lodging recommendations. We put boxes throughout the guide indicating it’s an item that you will need to take care of before you leave. We also give links to websites we think you should check before you leave.
Maybe. You can get around the South Rim very well without a car using the shuttle system, but you do need your own vehicle to get to Desert View. If you choose to visit Grand Canyon West, you are not allowed to drive your own vehicle and must use the provided park shuttles.
You NEED your own vehicle for the Grand Canyon North guide as well as the Grand Canyon East & Page guides. Most roads are passable in a regular car.
The South Rim guide includes a couple of hikes to the bottom of the canyon, but no way to drive down there.
However, the Grand Canyon East & Page guide does take you down to the Vermilion Cliffs and the Colorado River.
The Grand Canyon Overview Guide (included in the Grand Canyon Bundle) also has some ideas to get down to the bottom of the canyon.
Yes. We give approximate time frames that are needed to complete an activity. The schedule is generally not so packed that you have to be a quick traveler. But if you know you generally need more time, you can make adjustments. If you are quick, there are suggestions for additional activities
This is a digital download, so it will be EMAILED to you. That way, you can have access immediately and have the option to download it to any device you want.
Many travelers, including us, prefer to print the itinerary and take it with us as we travel.
The itinerary and audio guide are available immediately upon purchase, right on this webpage. You will also receive an email within 30 minutes with download links in case you need to revisit the links and download the items later. If you don’t receive your email, check your junk mail folder. If it’s not there, contact mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com, and we’ll be in touch with you within 1 business day. Also, the guides will be available in your account if you choose to establish one (we highly encourage it).
You need cell reception to download the audio guides. Once they are downloaded, no cell reception is needed.
Most people download the audio guides to their phone before they leave.
Just in case you are wondering, an average audio guide takes 150 MB of storage space.
We believe that the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is the best spot to visit if you are short on time and can only visit one place.
However, the North Rim guide pairs very well with Zion and Bryce Canyon.
Grand Canyon East & Page is between the North and South Rim and has beautiful sites and fun recreational activities.
If you want to see it all or are unsure about which area you want to visit, we recommend the Grand Canyon Bundle. It’s deeply discounted and includes 2 bonus guides: Grand Canyon Overview (3 road trip ideas) and Grand Canyon West (Hoover Dam & more).
The North Rim Guide has tons of great activities outside the national park in Kanab, UT and Page, AZ that we love to do, like hiking in slot canyons, going on Jeep rides, and exploring Lake Powell by boat.
If you aren’t sure which guides to get, email us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com and tell us where you want to go. A real human will get back to you within one business day.
National parks constantly change, including timed-entry requirements, construction, fires, and closures. To keep you updated on the most current things going on, we have a Parks Updates page that we update every week with important information. We recommend you look at this as soon as you begin planning your trip, as well as a few days before you leave.
Guides are automatically updated to the latest version when you create an account.
In addition to that, we also send an email notification out when a guide is updated. Just make sure to stay subscribed to our email list so we can reach you.
Because the download is a PDF file, you can do it on any device: computer, iPhone, Android, tablet, etc.
Stuff like this happens. We get it.
If you created an account, just log in again and download your guides.
If you didn’t create an account or forgot your password, just email us and we can resend your links.
For step-by-step instructions (including pictures), check out our Help With Downloads page.
If you still need help, reach out to us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible to help. We’re even happy to jump on a phone call with you if needed.
The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is only open mid-May through mid-October.
The rest of the guides can be used year-round, but there will be some hotels and services not available in the winter. Plus, the Grand Canyon gets snow, so be prepared with spikes for your shoes.
Yes!! We update our guides as needed, but write the concepts to intentionally be as timeless as possible. We encourage you to purchase the guide as soon as you know you will be traveling. It will help you determine which areas to stay and how many days to obtain lodging. Upon purchase, you’ll be guided to create an account on our website. If we update the guide, it will automatically show in your account. Your purchase includes free updates for life.
It is not required, but is HIGHLY recommended. We encourage you to create an account when purchasing the guides because you’ll have access to the links at any time.
You will have access to the updated guide through your account (another reason to create an account) for life. We generally send an email announcement when we do an update as well.
We believe that once you buy a guide from us, you should be able to use it to visit a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time.
If you created an account, just log in and download your guide again.
If you didn’t create an account, just email mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com and let us know you want us to resend your guide links.
We put approximate price ranges on all our activities so you know what to expect. The good news is that many things in this guide are free once you pay for entrance into the national park!
Although we do suggest some hikes, we offer plenty of alternatives if hiking is not desirable including, viewpoints and drives.
When the audio guide is available, here’s what you’ll need:
If you need technical support, check out our help with downloads page. If you are still struggling, you can email us at mattandcheryl@wereintherockies.com
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We have just returned from our tour of the Arizona and Utah. I would like to thank you both personally for your excellent guides (we bought the ones for Zion, Bryce, Moab (Arches) and Grand Canyon). They were superbly edited and a great help to planning our hikes and excursions.
The accompanying audio guides are very informative and entertaining. Cannot recommend these guides highly enough. Really superb.
My family of 6 loves listening to audiobooks while we travel, so this was a natural fit! We loved learning about the park while we drove around the park. The kids’ favorite stories were about the deaths in the Grand Canyon. For Christmas we had to buy them the book referenced by Matt! The itineraries were also invaluable as we traveled with other family members. All the suggestions were wonderful. Thank you, Matt and Cheryl, for making our family trip amazing and easy!
We love We’re in the Rockies! My husband and I enjoyed our first driving trip to a National Park last year, visiting the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon. We watched many videos by Matt and Cheryl as we prepared for our big adventure, and in retrospect, their information gave us all that we needed for a fantastic trip. We especially enjoyed the audio guides, which were very well researched and interesting. We are history buffs, and Matt’s commentary was so captivating! It was fun to have “the cook’s tour” as we drove to the park each day. Many thanks, Matt and Cheryl, for sharing so much helpful information with us! We appreciate your expertise!
Perfect for visiting all areas of the Grand Canyon OR to help you determine which area to visit.
See the BEST of the Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon Village, Mule Rides, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Lees Ferry, Hoover Dam, + the best viewpoints, hikes, drives and fun activities.
Includes All Grand Canyon Itineraries:South Rim, North Rim, East & Page
All Grand Canyon Audio Guides: 2 hours and 45 minutes of stories broken into 15 chapters. Download and listen while you drive!
Lodging and Dining Recommendations by area to minimize driving and suit any budget
Must know booking time-lines and checkboxes to help you secure reservations and stay ahead in your trip planning
BONUS: Grand Canyon West Itinerary – Only available in Grand Canyon Bundle ($19 Value) Includes Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Valley of Fire State Park, Lake Havasu, Route 66 stops, and Grand Canyon West (Skywalk)
BONUS: Grand Canyon Overview Guide – Only available in Grand Canyon Bundle ($19 Value) Includes three itinerary ideas to connect the Grand Canyon’s key areas and nearby destinations like Zion, Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, and Sedona. Features detailed maps and recommendations for where to stay each night. Note: This bundle does not include itineraries for Zion, Bryce, Las Vegas, or Sedona
Important: the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is currently closed due to a fire damage. Check the NPS site for the most recent updates
Highly recommend! I came across Matt and Cheryl on YouTube in the early planning sessions for a moms and daughters senior trip out west before I knew the guides exited, and I’m so glad I did! I ended up buying individual guides for The Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon. The information in the guides was invaluable, and it helped us plan our trip and prioritize what hikes and excursions we thought worked best for our group for our first (but not last!) visit. We had an amazing, memory making trip! We did not use the audio guides while driving, but I’ve since been listening to them on the treadmill. I’d definitely recommend to anyone planning a trip to the national parks!
You saved the day! My long time wish to visit the Grand Canyon (south rim) was saved because I had purchased your itinerary! Prior to our trip I had read, reviewed, and reread your suggestions. Good thing. We traveled to Arizona from Michigan and the day of our drive from Williams to the Grand Canyon the government went into shut down. Because of your suggested itinerary I knew what to do. The admission gates were unattended and the Visitors Center was closed. My husband and I had a beautiful day, gorgeous weather, and a really wonderful day in the stunning south rim of the Grand Canyon! Thank you!
We stumbled upon We’re in the Rockies on Youtube while researching for our first National Park adventure in 2022. The main goal was to see the Grand Canyon but after watching several videos, Matt and Cheryl felt like trusted friends. When we saw they actually offered travel guides that we could use ourselves, we were hooked. We purchased the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion guides for this trip and used them well! We saw so much with the help of these guides and learned so much from the included audio guides. You can tell Matt loves history; he is so animated in his delivery. Our trip planning became a breeze, and the execution of the plan was flawless. We would not have seen all that we had without Matt and Cheryl’s expertise. It meant more that they “grew up” going to the parks because their love and respect for them comes through. We commented to one another how fortunate we were to have our travel guides as we saw others trying to plan their days once they arrived at the parks. We easily modified or added to the daily itinerary if time allowed. Thank you for your wisdom and passion. You are our “go to” for western National Parks!
We bought the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon guides for our 50th wedding anniversary trip. They were both well written and an excellent way for us to plan our trip to an area we had never seen before. We took them with us so that we could use them to plan each coming day. Without the guides we would have missed most of the great experience that we had! Even if you have been to one of these places you will get more out of your experience with the guides. We constantly share our experience with others we know that are able to travel to these places. Worth every penny!!We went to see the North Rim Lodge and are SO glad we did because the park service let a “controlled burn” get away and now it is gone. Anyone going to any of the parks that are covered by these guides will benefit highly from their purchase.
I purchased the Grand Canyon bundle for our road trip. It was great. The layout of the information and the way it is laid out provides a great template for planning your trip. The biggest thing I don’t want to waste on a vacation is time by including things that aren’t that great or missing things that are. The guides are great and explaining the different things to see in the area and providing enough information to allow me more confidence in including the right stops and how to approach it. I can’t recommend Matt and Cheryl’s guides enough!