Monday, July 16: Grand Canyon to Flagstaff
This is “medium”???
This was a transition day. We packed up and left Grand Canyon by the East entrance. The day was cloudier than yesterday with scattered showers, so Sunday was definitely the day to be visiting the canyon.
About 10 or 20 miles outside of the park, we pulled over at a scenic overlook. There was a short hike to a deep canyon, formed by the Little Colorado River. It wasn’t nearly as wide as the Grand Canyon, but it was very deep and sheer.
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There was a rain shower nearby, but it didn’t really come closer.
It was amazing to see how elevation affects the flora. At the south rim, around 7,000 feet, there is a real forest, with a lot of pines. A bit outside the park, we dropped to 6,000 feet, and there was just green shrubby things. A bit further, and down to 5,000 feet, and it was looking like arid desert with sage brush and not too much else.
We drove to Flagstaff, which is up around 7,000 feet, wooded, and much more pleasant than the area around it. We had to stop at a pharmacy for another month of meds.
We wanted to listen to Mike and to do some things he wanted to do. In this case, he wanted to see “Ice Age: Continental Drift”, so we did a very non-national-park thing and saw a movie.
Afterwards we had dinner at an India/Nepal/Tibet restaurant, since we were getting tired of the same old stuff. I ordered mine “medium” which was a mistake. My tongue and lips were tingling the whole time I was eating. I would hate to see what the “hot” would be like. I should have ordered “mild”. I’m sure there were some other nice flavors that I could not appreciate through the heat.
We then stopped at a Safeway to pick up food for the next leg.
We plan to camp one night at Canyon de Chelly, and then to move on to camp at Mesa Verde.
Amy had thought to do the drive from Grand Canyon to Canyon de Chelly (via Flagstaff) in one day, but we figured that it would be easier to break it up with an overnight in Flagstaff, particularly if we wanted to throw a movie in.