Road Trip USA, Part 3: AZ Continued

After Petrified Forest we drove up to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  We enjoyed a couple days there.  I loved the hikes and the canyon, but I can't imagine visiting that place during the summer, there are probably a lot of visitors.  The end of October was still plenty busy so we just avoided the lodge and restaurant areas.  We got to hike a lot of the Rim Trail and we also went into the canyon a couple miles on the South Kaibab Trail.  The hike into the canyon was one of my favorite things.  The view is so different from below the rim.  We didn't go too far (maybe 3-4 miles total), but it was really steep.  Pace was a champ and hiked the whole thing on his own with a little prodding on the way up.  We also saw many overlooks.  So glad we got to visit.

The first look at the Grand Canyon

On the Trail of Time

A cool, old tree we found

All tuckered out

The mandatory front gate picture

South Kaibab Trail

Our victory shot after making it back up to the rim

Pace found a tractor, of course

This elk invited herself to our picnic.  We did not approach her, she approached us (we were sitting at a picnic table).

A Kieva

A picture of a tower we went up in from a distance

So, after our time in Grand Canyon we thought we were headed out to Joshua Tree National Park, but it was not meant to be.  Rather we spent about 4 days in Flagstaff.  Our escape decided it was done road trippin' and gave out.  I was using cruise control and all of a sudden we just came out of gear on the freeway.  I rolled to the side and realized I couldn't put the car into any gear, the transmission was out.  After waiting for the tow truck to get all the way out to us and then bring us back to Flagstaff to have it looked at our day was mostly gone. Our car cost more to fix than it was worth, so we had to part ways. Thankfully the car place we went to (shout out to The Transmission Man) was amazing and charged us nothing while we figured out how to sell it (they kept it for us over the weekend).  Also, thanks to Josh for looking up a good hotel for us to stay at.
Flagstaff turned out to be a really fun city and we spent most of our time exploring the place.  I would love to actually live there.  Their city parks are more like hiking parks.  Anyways, we also checked out Bearizona (a drive through animal park), Sunset Crater National Monument, Wupatki National Monument, Walnut Canyon National Monument, and Humphry's Peak.  Here are a few photo highlights.

Mountain goat at Bearizona

Bears

White Buffalo

Pace wanted to be a witch

....and a cowboy

Grant did too.

The bird show (that owl brushed my head as it flew by)

A falcon flying

Buffalo park is a city park, but it has national forest trails that start in it.  We found some friends to play with and a few tarantulas.

Sunset Crater (a volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago).

Lava flow hike

It was a pretty awesome hike

Can you see little Pace in all the Lava rocks?

I forget the name of this pueblo, but it was beautiful.  Pace kept calling it his castle.

It was on a rock pedistal

Wupatki Pueblo

A natural blow hole.  The earth blew up cold air from a cavern below.  Natural air conditioning.

He was tuckered out, but loved his train book too much to put it down.

Walnut Canyon was one of my favorite hikes in Flagstaff (possibly tied with the lava hike).  The canyon was amazing.  Humphrey's Peak is the tallest mountain in the area.  And people actually go skiing there.  Imagine skiing in Arizona!

One of the cliff dwellings

The canyon itself was beautiful

Views from the side of Humphrey's Peak

The clouds totally hid the mountain

The little bit of fall we actually did see