Exploring N. AZ

This was quite the weekend. I flew over from San Diego to Flagstaff, AZ with Andy Hendrickson in his 206 and really traveled around Northern AZ again. We started off Saturday at 10AM out of Gillespie Field and landed in Flagstaff by 12:30PM . Krystle picked us up at the airport with her brother and we drove out through Flagstaff without a destination and ended up at Sunset Crater National Park (http://www.nps.gov/sucr/).


Sunset Crater is the youngest volcano on the Colorado plateau, only 900 years old. The landscape has amazing contrasts of dark lava rock, green trees, and snow. They even trained the guys who made it to the moon here to practice walking around in their space suits and driving their lunar car around on lava rocks. We hiked a couple of short trails and then continued down the road to the Wupatki Indian Ruins.


These Ruins, are a time capsule of a culture that inhabited Northern AZ in 1100 AD. This building housed around 80-100 people. Some of the highlights of the area is their game area where people would gather to play a sport similar to soccer, and Markus's favorite: a blow hole where underground chambers vent out during days of low atmospheric pressure.

• View 9 more photos of Wupatki and Sunset Crater
  

Andy, Jeff Nelson, and I spent the evening in downtown Flagstaff and explored Flagstaff's night life.

Sunday morning we woke up early and found the Grand Canyon. We looked over the cliff and ate like presidents of the USA at the ol' Grand Canyon hotel for lunch. We even saw 3 large elk alongside the road on the way to the canyon. I've re-kindled my drive to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I just don't know if I want to hike back up! We'll see. This was Andy's first trip out the Canyon, and he was really impressed by it.

We made it back in time for Krystle's handbell concert, and listened to the music of all sorts of choirs. Of all the things we did this weekend, listening to Krystle's music was the highlight! Shortly after the concert, we took off for San Diego. I had a brief visit with the Cartwrights and Bill Jackson, and ended up in LA for the night to rest and get ready for work the next day.