We got up and got ready and headed over to the Burger King in town for breakfast, not my "ideal" choice, but with 3 females in the car with me, compromise is a good thing...that and just plain knowing when you're beat. After we got our grub on we went by Jim Gray's Gift Shop in Holbrook because the girls wanted to have their pictures taken with the dinosaur statues there.
This statue was across the street from the gift shop. I liked the mix of the petrified wood and other materials.
We got back on the road and hit our next destination, Meteor Crater near Winslow, AZ. Pretty interesting. They had a simulator that you could use to see what kind of damage certain objects would cause to various planets if these objects were to collide with them...I managed to take out a hole in the Earth the size of Texas on my first try, then Katie showed me up and took out the entire planet of Venus...kids these days.
Bonnie had to snap this one for my mom...there is a story, but I'll spare you.
After a rather stressful lunch (not near enough seating) at the Subway there at the crater we were back on the road and heading toward Grand Canyon National Park.
We made an unscheduled stop at Wupatki National Monument for bathroom breaks. So I decided, "we're stopped, might as well look around"...so we took a brief 1/8 mile or so hike to look at a couple of the ruins there.
After that brief stop it was back in the car and full speed ahead to the Grand Canyon...all the while looking at Mt. Humphreys (the highest point in AZ...also known to Emily as the snowy mountain [thank you Dora]).
We arrived at the Grand Canyon sometime around 3pm and proceeded to work our way around the south rim checking out each of the different scenic pull offs and some of the shorter trails off the main road. The canyon was quite a beautiful place, we didn't see or experience much of it, and I'd love to go back an give it a good weeks worth of my attention some day.
Amen. This was posted on the wall of the tower that overlooks the canyon.
We drove over to one of the lodges there on the south rim and ate dinner at the Canyon Cafe, which was essentially your standard food service offerings. We got on the road, in the dark, and headed towards Williams, AZ. Along the way there were numerous signs warning to watch for elk, so I had Bonnie on the alert to help me watch for them...however, Bonnie apparenty has poor night vision or something because she didn't even see the one that was maybe 3' off the road. I managed to spot a coyote and a jack rabbit in addition to the elk, so that was the sum of the wildlife viewing for the day. We got to Williams only to find everything was booked up, surprise surprise. We headed out and just started scouring nearby towns that were in our general direction of travel and ended up in Ashfork, AZ at the Ashfork Inn...can you say dump? Well it was a bed and roof over our head and I didn't see any bugs while the lights were on, so we got a little sleep.
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