Grand Canyon and Wigwams (Fri, July 23)

4:30 comes early and is not a popular time with any of us but if we wanted to see the sunrise at the Grand Canyon we had to get up and get moving as our campground was about a 50 minute drive from the south rim. I realized on the road that we should have left at 4:30 not gotten up at that time so we could see the sky start to brighten as we drove. I was so mad at myself for not figuring it out right. But it turned out ok in the end because it was really cloudy so the sun had to work its way above some clouds before you could really see it and we made it in for that. Because of the clouds it was not as spectacular as it could be but it was still a nice sunrise. We then caught breakfast at one of the cafeterias at the canyon and then took a few hours to take the shuttle bus along the rim stopping at several overlooks. By the time we got back from the Canyon, got the camper down, and hit the road we had already been awake 7 hours and it was only 11:30!! Pedro was so tired he fell asleep every time he sat down.

We fit a lot in as the day went on. Our first major stop after leaving the campground was Flagstaff. Flagstaff had a couple of different alignments of Rt 66 over the year so they have a walking tour you can take. We saw a couple of really interesting things on the walk. One was a building that had started out as a home before Rt 66 came through. Then the owners added a convenience store to the front when 66 came through. They also added a few small sheds out back for people to sleep in and called it an Auto Camp. Once 66 was rerouted the building again resorted back to a home. Right now it looks like someone lives in the home and uses the front for office space.

We also came across a spot that used to have a "Muffler Man" in front. It was a statue of Paul Bunyan. Over the years the original restaurant left and the Paul Bunyan statue was moved to the Northern Arizona University, the "Lumberjacks". After the tour we had to find a store for a new thumb drive to store pictures on. We ended up at a Target. When we left Target we asked the GPS to find our way to our next stop and much to our surprise it ran us right through the campus of NAU. Once we saw where we went we went hunting for Paul Bunyan and we found him!! Glad we needed to store all the pictures (Colin has over 2,000).

We then continued on through several small towns including Meteor City where a huge Meteor crashed into earth about 50,000 years ago and Winslow where we were "Standing on the Corner watching . . . " (Eagles song).

We finally ended the night at the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, AZ. We were a bit exhausted as you can imagine!