Bedrock City, the Grand Canyon, and Diablo Burger

When we headed out to Flagstaff last November that wasn’t the end of our trip! Flagstaff was just the place where we ate food and rested our heads for the night. Our real reason for the trip was to finally visit the Grand Canyon. On the way to the Grand Canyon we made a pit stop at Bedrock City, Arizona.

Bedrock City is the fictional town that the Flintstones lived in. In reality, Bedrock City is located in Williams, Arizona which is on the road that leads you up to the Grand Canyon.

Bedrock City is a campground and RV Park. There’s also a restaurant here in the back of a large gift shop. The gift shop is where you can gain entrance to the Bedrock City theme park.

They have a few cool little attractions in the parking lot as well. Like this …. mini van? 

Jake and I chillin’ (literally) inside the “mini van”. Brrrr it was cold that day! 

Here’s everything the admission to Bedrock City included. The price? A mere $5 bucks. I forgot to do it, but you can print out a coupon from the Bedrock City theme park website to get $1 off admission.

Here’s a map of Bedrock City and the campground. 

Bedrock City is a kooky little theme park. There’s a goat in a mini petting zoo and he’s called “Goatasaurus”. And there are these fun little photo op’s in the park. 

Here’s T “driving” one of the vehicles in the park.

Next to the grocery store they were roasting some pterodactyl. I helped by churning the wheel! I’m so helpful. 

The outside of the Grocery Store in Bedrock City. All of the building pretty much looked like this – a basic stone structure with a sign. It very much as that pre-historic “stone age” feel – in a post-apocalyptic kind of way.

The special that day was Cactus Juice! Something tells me this is the special every day.

Here’s a video tour of inside the grocery store!

There’s a theater that is constantly showing Flintstones cartoons. It was a flooded with water on one side and quite chilly so we just popped in for a moment. 

This photo amuses me for some reason.

Jake and I getting hauled off to jail. 

You can tour Fred and Barney’s house. They live right across the way from each other.

Here’s my little video tour of Fred Flintstones’s house.

There’s also a big Dinosaur Slide at Bedrock City. You bet we all went on that! 

View of the dino slide at the top of the stairs, looking towards Mr. Dino’s head.

Looking down the slide.

And a partial view of Bedrock City from the top of the slide. There was a train next to that big mountain thing, but the train was not running that day. Probably because no one wanted to hang outside in the cold. 

Bedrock City is totally worth it if you love kitschy stuff like I do! It’s mostly great for photo ops and a little bit of amusement. 

The Grand Canyon is not too far away from here – you just head north to the entrance. The entrance fee for the Grand Canyon is $30 per car and is good for one week. You can buy the pass in advance – if you do, you can avoid the long line of people waiting to pay for their pass.

There was a TON of people at the Grand Canyon – many more than I thought there would be. Apparently a lot of people had the same idea as us – hit up the Grand Canyon right after Thanksgiving! It took us awhile to find a place to park in the Grand Canyon Village. We had to walk a bit to get to the Rim Trail but once we did we were astounded by the beautiful view of the canyon. 

Our first look at the Grand Canyon. What you don’t see in the paved path right along the rim filled with TONS of people gawking at the view like us. 

But it is truly gawk-worthy! This view is just a mere slice of the Grand Canyon. It makes you feel so small gazing out at this massive canyon.

There are trails from here that go down into the Grand Canyon. You can see a few hikers over on the lower left side of the photo. 

As you walk along the Rim Trail, there are various gift shops with have different viewing areas. 

I got a little freaked out being in the open are viewing area since you’re pretty high up – but it’s worth it to go out and check out the views. 

After we spent a little bit of time at Grand Canyon Village, we decided to head east to check out more viewpoints. There’s a road (64 – Desert View Dr) that takes you to the Desert View Watchtower. As you drive out, there are multiple viewpoints that you can stop at for more views of the Grand Canyon. I highly recommend doing this! This way you get to see more of the Grand Canyon.

From one of the viewpoints we stopped at, you could see the Colorado River snaking through the bottom of the canyon. It looks so small in the distance. 

It’s amazing to see just how vast it is and all of the stunning colors in the canyon.

A sign telling us just what we were looking at. The only downside to the stopping at the viewpoints was the WIND. The wind really whips through this area and there’s nothing to block it – so it was FREEZING COLD. I was only able to enjoy the view for a few minutes before wanting to get back into the car to avoid the wind! 

We headed further out to the Desert View Watchtower.

In the parking lot we met this cute guy who was only 8 weeks old! 

The Desert View Watchtower is on the eastern side about 30 minutes away from the Grand Canyon Village. This structure was built in 1932 designed by Mary Colter. 

“Modeled after ancient ancestral Puebloans watchtowers found in the Four Corners region, the Watchtower, at Desert View, is primarily a rest and interpretive area, offering limited food and drink service and a small gift shop. The walls of the tower feature murals by Hopi artist Frank Kabotie and you can climb the stairs to the top for an outstanding view of the Canyon and the surrounding area.”

– National Park Service website (https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/photosmultimedia/colter_wt_photos.htm)

There’s some great artwork inside the walls of the tower. 

There’s also a viewing deck where you can look out at the canyon. This is the view! 

It was late in the afternoon at this point and we started heading back to Flagstaff. Once we got back into town, we headed to a restaurant called Diablo Burger for dinner.

You have to walk down a little alleyway to get to Diablo Burger since it’s behind some other buildings in Downtown Flagstaff. 

I read some good things about their burgers here. Apparently everyone knows about it, too, because this tiny place was PACKED. 

There are about four long tables inside (with I believe six seats each) and a bar area with 4 seats. The line went out the door. There’s outdoor seating and a few people opted for that but I’m too much of a wuss to eat outside in 30 degree weather. We almost left because the wait seemed silly but I figured… gosh, we’re already here. Someone got up at the bar area and Jake managed to snag us three seats in some highly uncomfortable bar stools (I kept sliding off the seat).

It took a really long time to order. The guy taking orders seemed to be part bartender and cashier. It’s a tiny place and things do not move fast here. Am I just a spoiled Californian or something?

We finally placed our order. Silly me got an extra Basket of Frites [$5.50] not realizing how many fries this would be. You get a choice of one dipping sauce to go along with your double fried frites (which are topped with a little herbs de provence). We were boring and just got ranch. The fries are nice and crispy and had a good flavor from the herbs. 

Jake and I shared the Marilyn Burger [$12]. The burgers are made with 6 ounces of “100% local, open range-raised, antibiotic-free and growth-hormone free beef”. The burgers have English muffin “buns” and each one is branded with the Diablo Burger logo. I admit that I like this extra touch.

The Marilyn is a simple burger with your choice of cheese. We got it with cheddar cheese. I liked how the cheese melted perfectly to completely cover the beef. 

We got the burger medium rare and this was a wonderful pink inside! The beef was really juicy and the beef tasted wonderful. It’s a simple burger – there’s not much to it but the beef tasted really good to me. Jake thought it was just okay. He thought the burger was good but not mind blowing. I do agree with that. 

T got the Cheech Burger [$13.25] which came with guacamole, pepper jack cheese, and jalapenos. He said it was pretty spicy! 

While I liked the burgers I didn’t really care for the overall experience. It was hard to find, there was a long line out the door in the cold, the register moved really slowly, it was hard to get seats and I kept sliding off the uncomfortable seats. But the food was good – it was a half and half kind of experience. Good food, but you can get grumpy trying to get the food! 

Diablo Burger
Located in Old Town Shops
120 N Leroux St.
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
928-774-3274
Sun-Wed 11AM-9PM
Thurs-Sat 11AM-10PM