The Grand Canyon

We woke up early to get a good start to the day. Every place we've stayed has offered breakfast. The one thing we've noticed coming south is that in addition to the usual bagels, cereal etc are biscuits and gravy. The biscuits are similar to what Arlene has made before and the gravy's a bit like schmaunt vat or a cream gravy. People put a few bisquits on their plate, smother it in the gravy, mash it all together and go to town!
Never did try it.
They also have an instant omelet. Basically it's a semi prepared egg thing folded over with cheeze in the middle. You throw it in the microwave and voila! You have an omelet. Throw some sausage or bacon on top, maybe some biscuits and gravy and you're set for the day.

We took our breakfasts and sat out by the pool looking out to the San Francisco Peaks. Could it get any better than this?

Nice thing about Flagstaff is that it's less than an hour from the Grand Canyon. Trying to book a hotel/motel in the actual Grand Canyon area was next to impossible.

Lot of the stores or Trading Posts as they are called are run by the Navajo Indians. Nice stuff and busy this time of year. One place we stopped was ok to look around in until about 6-7 tour busses came rolling in. It was like the United Nations had landed. Italian, French, Slovac, British, Japanese, Chinese you name it and they were there.

It got a little crazy so we moved on. At one of the many "scenic view" stops along the way we found a couple of long rows of Navajo selling crafts. It was kind of like the booths you'd see at Harvest Festival or Corn and Apple only they were all connected under long roofs.

The beauty of it was it wasn't quite as commercialized as the "Trading Posts" were and there was no tax to pay!

This is also where we climbed down to a viewing area that thankfully had railing all around it. There was one section, right at the end of the area that had room for one person to squeeze into and look straight down as it was built right on the edge! I was shaking as I peered over the edge to take a pic.

Amazing sight though. Again, the camera didn't catch the full feel of it all.

About this time it was around 37-38C. I know it's a dry heat, but it's hot nontheless. I give full credit to these people that hang out here from sun up to sun down selling their crafts.

There were a couple of different places to stop in this park. They run all around the rim and you can see by the pictures, that's a large area to cover. We started at the east end and worked our way to the southern rim. We stopped at a place that featured an old brick tower you could climb up and take pics from. It was crawling with people and the view we had from below was spectacular anyway.

There was a snack place and grocerie store here so we stopped for a bite to eat. Cafetria style and it went slow due to the many different languages being spoken.

We moved on to an area called Grand Canyon Village. It featured some hotels and a starting point for train rides and mule rides to the bottom of the Canyon. We didn't plan the time or else it would've been nice to try one or the other. I think I'd probably prefer the train to riding a donkey to the bottom.

We took a scenic route back to Flagstaff. A little hot tub time, more Italian at the Roma Pizza place we ate at yesterday.

Tomorrow it's off to Albuquerque...to make a left turn...;-)

Click on the chapter title to see more pix.