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| Walnut Canyon National Monument |
We wanted to see Walnut Canyon National Monument, just east
of Flagstaff. It is a separate park, but is the third piece to the Sunset
Crater-Wupatki loop. It's a very deep and narrow canyon with hundreds of cliff
dwelling ruins in it and a steep and winding path through it. We got an early
start, hoping to walk around before the visitor center opened, but the gate was
locked, as well, so we sat in line with everyone else for a half hour or so
before we all filed in.
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| Stairs going down the canyon's Island Trail. |
It was worth the wait. It was small, but stunning. A bus
pulled in and unloaded a bunch of folks, so we passed on the crowded steep
trail. I would've waited for Grace, since I didn't want to go on that one,
anyway, but she wasn't that excited about it. We walked around an upper trail
by the visitor center that included an overlook of the canyon (and I can't believe we didn't get any pictures; these are from the park site), and a couple of ruins, but the wind was
ferocious, so we got back in the car and headed east on I-40 towards Holbrook,
AZ.
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| A&W fries and ice cream cones. So good. |
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| Petrified log. How these are created is fascinating to me. |
On the way, we impulsively followed signs for a meteor
crater. I knew it would be a tourist trap and the signs were soooo hokey, but
we kept on. Sure enough, they wanted a fortune to go listen to an indoor
presentation, and we turned right around and left. Guess there was too high a
wind to give guided tours.
As we drove through Holbrook, we passed an A&W, which we
had to pull into for an ice cream cone. Yum. Then, on to Petrified Forest
National Park. We went on a small trail behind the first visitor center and
just stopped at pullouts after that.
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| The beautiful Painted Desert. |
The park also includes a good portion of the Painted Desert which covers large tracts of AZ. It is not a separate park, but they have a separate stamp for it and pins and patches, which we got, of course. Took lots of beautiful pictures, read up on the
park and hit the freeway headed for
Alburquerque.
