Our day began very early. We got up at 4:00a.m. and headed to the Grand Canyon to watch the sunrise. It was a brisk 37 degrees as we headed out. We joined a small crowd of people and enjoyed the peace and serenity of watching a new day form. The experience reminded me of watching the sunrise at Haleakala volcano in Maui. Once the sun was up we walked along the Canyon Rim trail stopping to take in the views and capture the moment. We even saw about 4 elk in the parking lot on the way back to our car (we had seen two when we first arrived as well). Heading out of the park we went to grab the most expensive McDonald’s breakfast ever! I think it was $18 for Tom and I! With a full belly we set out to find a geocache so we could check Arizona off of our geocaching maps. Uncle Tommy and the kids stayed in the car, while Jen, Tom and I headed out. It was a nice little hike (less than 500 feet) up a grassy/rocky area where we quickly found the cache. After heading back to the hotel to shower and rest we were back on the road.
The plan for lunch was to find a grocery store and buy the supplies for a picnic lunch at Slide Rock State Park, but I talked Jen out of stopping at the “general store” outside the Grand Canyon because I figured it would be super expensive (considering how expensive McDonald’s was) and thought we would stop at a grocery store or Wal-Mart on the way. We never did find a store, but was surprised on our drive to the park by the hilly, canyon, scenic route. When we got to the park we found a long line of cars to the parking lot. Jen got out to scout the situation and came back to let us know that the guide said that from where we were in the line it would be about a half hour to hour wait to park and suggested that we leave a driver with the car and everybody else walk in ($3/person walk-in fee versus a $20 parking fee). My Tom volunteered to stay with car while the rest of us got out to explore. The kids changed into their swimming suits and experienced the slide rock part of Slide Rock State Park. The area is a river with small rapids that the kids could slide down the rocks. Upon first getting in the water the look on Sean’s face said the water was quite cold, but both Sean and Beth enjoyed their time sliding down the rocks while I took pictures/video and Tom and Jen watched. Unfortunate our eyes were on the clock and we knew it was time to head back to find Uncle Tommy. We made it back with perfect timing as he was one car away from the turn around before heading into the parking lot. We jumped in the car, thanked Uncle Tommy for staying with car, and headed to Sedona for lunch. Obviously we hadn’t originally planned on going to Sedona since we were going to do a picnic lunch, but since we never found a grocery store we made an impromptu decision to go to Sedona which was only 8 miles or so from the park. Sedona was packed but we found some parking and ate at the Sedona Pizza Company. The food was good, but overpriced and the service was slow. To get back on our route we had to go back the way we came and saw an unbelievably long line of cars heading into Sedona. So glad that we missed that. After a stop at scenic overlook, we were back on the road towards the Petrified Forest.
I was driving the stretch to the Petrified Forest and I saw a billboard for the Meteor Crater. I remember visiting the Meteor Crater when I helped Carol moved to Arizona and we stopped there. I remembered the Meteor crater being interesting, so I suggested we stop if it wasn’t too far off of our route. Tom Googled it and found that it was only 6 miles off the freeway so we decided to check it out. Meteor Crater is the most preserved meteor impact site in the world. We explored the museum and watched the 10 minute movie and viewed yet another hole in the ground. The crater is pretty big and I was surprised when I looked through one of the mounted telescopes on an observation desk that there was a 6 foot cutout of an astronaut with the American Flag at the bottom of the crater floor. You could not see that with the bare eye at all! We spent about an hour at the crater and headed back on the road to the Petrified Forest.
We got to the Petrified Forest at 6:45p.m. or so, and knew we had a limited amount of daylight left. We walked the .8 mile Crystal Forest trail and saw all kinds of petrified logs and the sunset. We drove through the rest of the park in twilight and didn’t get to experience all the views and colors the painted desert has to offer. I couldn’t believe where the day had gone. We had used every minute of daylight as we could today and we could have used a few more hours! After leaving the park we still had an hour drive to our hotel in Gallup, NM.
By the time we got to Gallup, we had gone through a time zone change and lost another hour and it was just after 10:00p.m. We hadn’t eaten dinner and we were all exhausted, but wouldn’t you know what was right by our hotel . . . a Walmart!! Where was that earlier today! We ended up eating at the McDonald’s in the Wal-Mart to save time, and we bought groceries for picnic lunch tomorrow. We got settled in our rooms and immediately hit the sack. What a long awesome day.
