FYI – Part of Arizona chooses to not observe day light savings time. Grand Canyon and Tuba city appear to, but Flagstaff – not so much.
That was cool last night, since we got an extra hour to use! Yeah!
We found our hotel right off the highway, not as nice as the pictures on line, but nice! (i know, go figure)
Today was scheduled as a pretty low key day – the options originally planned were an extra chance to see the grand canyon again or see some of the national parks around!
We finally got our Starbucks fix! Ah!!
Then we headed off to Sunset Crater national park which is in the same area as the Wupatki ruins.
Sunset Crater National Park was pretty cool! Who knew there were lava flows right off the highway??
It’s a small park but lots of info there! We had gotten the national park pass for the Grand Canyon (and figured we could use it at Rocky Mountain – since we live there!)
So we were able to get in for free!
We did a short hike to the top of Lenox Crater. (1/2 mile straight up soft sand, ugh!)
It was amazing from there – some of it looked like big giant rocks, other tiny pebbles and from a distance some even looked like pavement – really cool!
We did another mile (ish) hike around the lava flows – very cool!! (have i mentioned how cool it was!)
We stopped at a couple more overlooks and enjoyed the views!!!
We exited that park and entered the Wupatki national park – the ruins were pretty neat. We spent a lot of time discussing what we thought each part of the structure might have been, how wealthy the occupants, their daily tasks, and where they went when they disappeared! It was fun!
We headed back to the hotel for a nap after our adventure in the parks.
Gotta love non structured vacations!
After our nap we headed to old downtown Flagstaff to walk around and find something fun for dinner!
Not too much interesting down there – could have been me not wanting to spend much money…
We had dinner and then stopped into a winebar i had read about! Super cute location – upstairs, tons of seating, chocolates and yummy wines!
After our grownup rest we headed up to the local Observatory (started by a Lowell – one of the big names back in mass – how funny!)
We got to see Saturn – super super cool and the moon!
It was a fun night and I’m looking forward to Phoenix today! (With a couple hikes along the way!)