Grand Canyon, Sunset Crater, Walnut Canyon, and the Painted Desert (again)

Another busy weekend for me. I left Chinle right after work and went straight to Flagstaff. Fairly uneventful.

 

Saturday was dedicated to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, it was incredible cloudy. So much so, the clouds made it nearly impossible to see the other side (north rim). It was also right around 45 degrees all day. I made the best of it though. I will put up a time lapse video shortly to show the clouds moving through the canyon. It looks pretty cool. For the rest of the day I hiked down the Blue Angel Trail. Pretty standard, nothing to crazy. I opted not to go far very down so I could get to the other look outs. Which I did. I didn’t get too many pictures because there wasn’t much to get with the clouds and the fog. But I did get some interesting ones.

 

The next day I spent at three parks, Sunset Crater, Walnut Canyon, and The Painted desert and The Petrified Forest.

 

Sunset Crater was pretty cool- several cones left over from eruption about 1000 years ago. There is also lots of lava flows through out. I hiked to the top of the Lennox Crater which was at about a 20-30% grade. That killed me. It was nice because it gave an unimpeded view of the San Francisco peaks. These are very important to Navajo culture, they are also known as Dook’o’oosłííd one the Four Sacred Mountains.

 

 

Grand Canyon

Sunset Crater, Walnut Canyon, and the Painted Desert

I then headed off to Walnut Canyon. This particular park was established to protect dozens of ruins that were built into the canyon. There are a couple of small hiking trails that allow you walk into the canyon and into many of the dwellings.

 

Finally, I headed back to the Petrified Forest to check out the Painted Desert. I had seen it before but didn’t have much time to spend there because it was the end of the day. I just took a bunch of pictures and walked around the badlands. I also stopped by a small site marking the former Route 66. The iconic American road no longer exists but many of the newly refinished and renamed roads still advertise its former path. In this particular area though, the street can only re “recognized” by the old telephone poles stretch down endlessly in empty desert field. You can’t even see where there was a road. A very interesting and slightly spooky piece of Americana. It is impressive how something so symbolic of American progress can disappear.

 

So that was my weekend. Enjoy the pictures and the video.

EDIT: video is now posted!