Posted in Show and Tell Friday

Happy Friday, and welcome to my first Show &Tell Friday with Canadagirl in far too long!  If you have something you'd like to share with us, please do go visit Mary.

A few weeks ago it was my husband's birthday, and so we decided to go camping up in Flagstaff for a long weekend.  Flagstaff is at a significantly higher elevation than where we are down here in the valley, so their temperatures run, on average, 30° cooler than ours.  Needless to say, it's a popular summer destination for the valley residents.  We headed up on Wednesday and set up camp in the beautiful Ponderosa Pines.

Thursday was hubby's actual birthday, and we let him plan the whole weekend, so we were off on a day trip (me? I'd sit at the campsite and NEVER MOVE, because that's a vacation to me, but he's an on-the-go kind of guy. So, off we went.) to the Sunset Crater just NE of Flagstaff.

Apparently, the whole northern part of Arizona would be relatively flat except that it's a hot-bed of volcanic activity.  Okay, inactive volcanic activity, but another eruption would not surprise scientists.  Pretty much all the mountains that can be seen up there were once volcanoes.  You can still see the lava flow from the most recent volcano, Sunset Crater, which erupted roughly 1,000 years ago.  Due to too many man-made disturbances, they have shut down the trail up to Sunset Crater (unless you're Native American, who use it for ceremonies), but you are more than welcome to climb up others.  Which we, pant, pant, *gasp*, did.  Still recuperating from that.  About 300 yards almost totally vertical.  Anyway... see the black rock on the right? That's the lava flow.

After enjoying a couple of walks (see above photo, taken on the footpath at the base of Sunset Crater), we got back in our truck and headed the 20 some miles to the Wupatki Pueblo. This would have been inhabited when Sunset Crater last erupted, and it boggles the mind to think of what the people must have thought, doesn't it?  It's beautifully preserved, and has a fascinating history.  Here's the village pueblo:

Here's the community gathering place (it was a huge circle):

After this trip, we headed home to celebrate:

The next morning, we got up and headed to the Grand Canyon, which is about 85 miles NNW of Flagstaff.  We had a beautiful day for it and enjoyed a lovely drive.

We first stopped at National Geographic's visitor center, which is incredible.  I picked up a living school book for each of the boys for our next school year, which is always fun.  We got "Brighty of the Grand Canyon" by Marguerite Henry and "The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons" by John Wesley Powell, who, incidentally, was a Civil War veteran who, with nine other men, took four boats into the Colorado river to explore the last unmapped territory of the continental United States.  This book is a compilation of J.W. Powell's journals from that journey, and this boat is an exact replica Hollywood made when they filmed the story:

After purchasing our admission tag, we hopped in the truck and headed the last few miles to the Grand Canyon.  We stopped at the National Park Service's visitor center as well.  Here's Jigger standing in front of a representation of the layers of rock, sediment, etc., that the Grand Canyon is comprised of:

Finally, here's the Grand Canyon:

And here's a shot when I was playing around with my camera settings.  I actually have several of these sepia toned photos, and prefer them to the full on color photos.

While we were there, we saw three California Condors.  These birds have been on the endangered list, and were recently re-released into the Grand Canyon.  We had read up on that before we went, and were properly awed every single time they flew overhead.  Of course, I didn't get a photo of them, which, upon seeing a picture of them up close, Piper remarked was probably a good thing, lol.

While there, we had so much fun listening to all of the different languages and seeing all of the different people.  It was amazing.  We heard Asian (several dialects), Italian, Spanish, French, British, German, and Dutch, just to name a few.  Piper was asked by a French family to take their photo, and we (unwittingly) asked a portly, older Italian gentleman to take ours.  My pathetic Italian language skills didn't allow me to pick up that he wanted to know where the zoom was until the photo was done, but that's okay, because we have the memory of that photo of his congenial frustration and my non-existant Italian conversation.  Here's the final product:

We sat awhile...:

before heading back to our truck.  By the by, if you like, you can take a train directly to the Grand Canyon.  That seems like the way to travel to Jigger:

And that's our trip north.  Saturday hubby did give me one day to sit around the campsite, so we did a long Nature Walk and played board games around the drizzly rain.  It was lovely.  Can't wait to go back.