helloooo, hellooooo, hellooo. Do you hear me echoing? We drove late into the night and pulled in bleary eyed into Grand Canyon National Park about 9pm. We stayed at the Bright Angel Lodge overlooking the Grand Canyon. Usually rooms are booked up to two years in advance, but by the grace of God we came when the season was slow and rates had been drastically reduced. We were able to get a room looking out over the canyon. It was beautiful (photos to follow). God really knows how to do his handiwork.
We wanted to wake up to see the sunrise, so the alarm went off at an upsetting 7am. After hitting snooze a few times we threw on warm clothes, grabbed the camera, the kid and headed out. We seemed to have the park to ourselves and it was pristine. We walked several trails, then hopped in the car to drive the windy road up to Hermit's Rest, taking pictures along the way.
There were several overlooks that were too scary, even for me. They were the kind of overlooks that make the hair on your hiney prickle. So like the doting wife that I am, I handed the camera to Thomas and said, "here, you go look, I'll stay here with Declan". Poor Declan, after getting in and out of the car so many times, he started getting slower and slower. One guy laughed at me when I told Declan, "come on, let's go see some more rocks!"
Lunch was a fancy affair. Gourmet homemade raspberry jam straight from my mom's garden with Peanut Butter, made it a picnic to remember. We decided to add a rustic touch with desert of Beef Jerky.
We left the Grand Canyon going south towards Flagstaff, AZ looking for Walnut Canyon ruins. We pulled up about quarter after four and the temperature had been dropping steadily. The hour long hike had just closed right before we got there, but there was a smaller rim hike that we decided would be fun. We bundled up, Thomas put Declan in the Mei Tai on his back and we struck out. The wind cut through us and you could hear it howling through the ravines. With a rainstorm moving in, we figured we had enough pictures and headed for the safety of the visitors center.
We headed to the car to figure out the best way to get to Mount Rushmore without going through Zion Nation Park one more time (so far the record for this trip is 1x by night and 2x by day). We pulled out the trusty laptop, GPS and AAA map and figured going by way from Flagstaff, AZ through Albuquerque, NM (yeah, have fun spelling that one!) then heading north through Denver, CO finally arriving somewhere up north. It looks like Yellowstone is out on this trip. All the roads in the park seem to be closed and half the ones getting there. We will have to do that next time.
So here we are, on the road somewhere about forty minutes outside of Albuquerque (yeah, I am going to spell it as many times as I can!). When we get there we will try to find some good Mexican food. My theory is to look for the restaraunt with the most local cars in front of it. Locals usually know.
Stops today:
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Walnut Canyon National Park (cliff dwellings), Arizona
drove, drove, drove into New Mexico
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