The Grand Canyon National Park

We left Phoenix on Wednesday heading for Flagstaff to spend a night on the way to the Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at Monteauma's Castle which is a national monument where native american cliff dwellers lived. The castle has three levels and is in the rocks on the side of a cliff.
 Phoenix is hot but Flagstaff was cool. It is a ski resort  town and you see a lot of pine and aspen trees.. to me it is not how I picture Arizona. It was a very cute town  where we walked around and had dinner at a Pizza restaurant. At 8 p.m we went to the Lowell Observatory to look at the planets. Lowell was where Pluto was discovered in the 1930's. We viewed the moon and saturn through two huge telescopes.

On Thursday we headed to the Grand Canyon and stayed one night at the Maswick Lodge right in the park. It was very nice and we were able to walk over next door to the cafeteria and eat our meals. We went to the south rim of the canyon and hiked a ways down the Bright Angel trail which is where the mules travel daily. You have to get reservations for mule rides about a year in advance. The mules come from Tennessee and are a very safe way to travel the trail. In fact, there has never been an episode of a mule falling or injuring a rider. You can also backpack down the trail to the bottom..( it's about 10 miles) spend the night and then hike back up after 4 p.m. the next day. Hiking up and down the same day usually results in a visit to the hospital because the temperature rises the farther down you go. We hiked a ways down the trail to watch the sunset over the Grand Canyon which was amazing. We also visited the Geology center and the gift shop where Bubs bought several gifts for his family.
Today we toured more of the canyon, this time the east end called Desert View. We walked up to the Watch tower which gives you a panoramic view of the canyon. After Desert View we headed out of the canyon towards Zion National Park where we will spend two days. On the way to Zion we toured the Glen Canyon Bridge and ate lunch on the lawn. We arrived in Zion around 3 p.m. I think it  is the most beautiful national park I have ever visited.