When I wrote last we had just passed through the Four Corners, on our way to the Grand Canyon. This whole region is the Navajo Indian Reservation, by the way -Francisco’s first interaction with our Native Americans. After staying the night in Tuba City, we ate breakfast at a small cafe across the highway before filling up the tank and getting back on the road. This was our first fresh tortilla of the trip, and rocked my world.
Since our southern-most destination was Tuscan, we aimed for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. This means that we didn’t get to see that new glass walkway over the cliff-edge. I saw a show about it on the History Channel several years ago, and would like to go back and see it (quite an engineering feat, if you ask me). But that wasn’t part of the plan on this trip. We were able to cover quite a long distance along the canyon, due to relatively recent funding for trails and road maintenance. We didn’t plan ahead for our Canyon-side picnic and resorted to devouring a bag of SmartFood popcorn that I’d been saving. This was before we found a full-size grocery store along with several restaurants… We had lunch, went to the very end of the trail and came back. The Grand Canyon is huge. Which is an understatement. And overwhelming. And I think it was hard to appreciate at some level, without climbing the trails down or rafting parts of the river. But we did our best. We took a million pictures with Francisco’s point-and-shoot (this would’ve been a perfect time for a better camera…), so here are just a few to give a general idea.
We had planned on spending the night near Flagstaff, but we ended up just grabbing a coffee there and driving all the way to Tucson that night. We were kind of tired of hotels (paying for them, mostly), and I was anxious to see my friends Chloe and TJ. We crashed pretty quickly when we got to their house, but they let us sleep in (thank you!!) while they went out on their respective bike rides. We ended up spending three nights there and leaving the morning of the third day. Chloe took us on a walking tour of the city, which was pretty neat and gave a good overview of downtown. We all went out for Mexican food that night with her Tucson buddies (I’d met most at their wedding in October). The next day we headed out on bikes with Chloe and went a few miles along the “wash.” She said that the city is trying to find money to connect certain walking and bike paths in the city. But at this point there was a definitive end to the path and then we had to turn around. Francisco enjoyed it because he didn’t get out of breath (more oxygen down there), and I loved being able to just ride and not worry about Boulder’s hills. Chloe’s got a great set-up down there with her house and hubby, and she made us feel very welcome. At the end of our stay she gave us some suggestions on where to eat and sleep on our way back to Colorado. The first was Hatch, New Mexico, but that’s a story for next time.
