The boys and I made it home safely a little bit ago after a nine hour drive from the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We made a few stops on the way, twice for food and gas and a few times my legs started to cramp so we'd stop and stretch a bit. We clocked about 2500 miles all told in just under two weeks.
The car is unloaded, some things put away and the rest can wait for tomorrow. We've ordered in dinner and after this I intend to just vegitate because I'm pooped.
On Thursday morning we left Cortez, Colorado and headed for the Four Corners. We spent two days at the Comfort Inn in Cortez, a small town in southwestern Colorado that sits on the edge of two Indian Reservations and within a short drive in any direction there are several national parks and monuments.
That was the second Comfort Inn we stayed at on this trip and if you're traveling on a budget I highly recommend the chain after our exprience. They offer a fantastic free breakfast and have high speed computers available for guests to use which is how I was able to post along the way.
Ann and Shawn had to be back at work on Friday and it was a 7 to 8 hour drive back to Colorado Springs for them and the boys and I had about 5 hours of driving ahead of us so we left early. Our goal was to say good-bye and each head out from Four Corners by noon and it was a little less than an hours drive from Cortez.
There's not much at the Four Corners except the large monument that marks where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet. I haven't been there since I was a kid, about 40 years ago now and then it was just a little plaque in the ground out in the middle of nowhere. Now it's a big plaque out in the middle of nowhere. Of course we all had to stand in 'four places at once' and document it with a photo. (We took over 200 pictures on this trip)
They have also opened a small museum dedicated to Indian tribes whose reservations encompase those four states for miles around. And they've also started a small outdoor market where the artisans from the area gather to display and sell their wares. It was fascinating watching a Navaho gentleman carve a beautful hummingbird on a freshly shaped clay pot. The detail was exquisite. I ended up buying one of his pots and it was tough to choose because they were so beautiful.
After making sandwiches it was sadly time to say our good-byes. My sister and her husband are the best, and we all had such a fantastic time together. As we exited, Ann and Shawn went left and we turned right, heading across the Navaho reservation in Northern Arizona. The first forty minutes or so of the drive it was pretty flat and barren but then we hit a long stretch of startling rock formations and the scene just kept getting more and more incredible. We settled in for the evening at Jacob Lake, a little hamlet in the Kanab National Forest 45 minutes outside the entrance to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
Friday we spent the day saying WOW!! a lot. I've never been to the north rim before and I really appreciated that it wasn't as crowded and touristy as the south rim. The north rim is also 2000 feet higher than the south so you can see even further when it's clear and we had a glorious sunny morning before the clouds came in the afternoon.
We did three short hikes and the boys enjoyed climbing around a bit. To say the views of the canyon were spectacular would be an understatement. After a nice meal at the lodge we were all more than satisfied that our visit had been everything we hoped.
And now we're back. I'll post some photos over the next few days.
