Grand Canyon to Sedona

We went back to the Grand Canyon in the morning and Jim walked down the Bright Angel trail for an hour and I took the little shuttle bus out to some of the view points along Hermit Road. I just hopped on the bus and was quite away down the road when I found out that there were quite a few stops along the way and then entire trip to Hermits Head (where there was a gift shop/snack bar and bathrooms) was 1 1/2 hours. So I did not go all the way -- but I really need to go back and do the entire trip along the shuttle - there are stops and viewpoints and it is incredible to see the canyon from the viewpoints along this road. This is a picture of the Koib Studio. It is a small gift shop and art gallery that sits right at the edge of the canyon. It is in the small village that is there. There are some beautiful painting on display - some for sale and some just to look at. I took lots and lots of pictures, but none really do the Canyon justice.

I really liked the to see the Park Rangers all dressed up with the Hats. It was like seeing them when I would see them on TV back in the 60's. It is amazing to see those hats. And the signs for the National Parks is the exact sign I remember from TV as a child. We didn't have American channel but we must have seen Park Rangers and National Park signs on "Wonderful World of Disney"


We stopped just down the road at a little camp ground and had our lunch in the shade. Nice little park full of Ponderosa Pines. The drive south on Highway 64 and 180 was through the Kaibab National Forest. Lots of trees and lovely and cool and green. I took lots of pictures -- again. There was a large snow covered mountain off in the distance -- Mount Humphreys - highest point in Arizona -- 12,633 feet -- that is high.

Coming south of Flagstaff into Sedona the road descended quite a lot. Sedona sits in quite a valley surrounded by large cliffs of red rock. It is a beautiful area - very different from the Flagstaff/Grand Canyon area.
Sedona is also FULL of tourists -- tons and tons of people - we were quite surprised to see so many people. But is was a Saturday and the weather was beautiful and hot. The town was so full of people that the traffic slowed to a crawl about 2 miles before the town. This is a picture taken on a bridge about 5 miles before Sedona. You can see all the people on the rocks at the edge of the river.
We did not even attempt to find a room in Sedona. We drove on to a town about 25 miles south, Cottonwood. We got a nice room at a new Quality Inn there.

The area around Cottonwood is really nice - it is a wide open valley (unlike Sedona which is quite closed in). It was very hot there. We wandered into Walmart and attempted to buy a few items with the self serve checkout. I very nice young girl helped us out. I'm sure she thought we were a couple of morons. We don't have the self serve checkouts in Canada and Jim thought it would be quicker -- it took three times longer we double entered stuff and couldn't figure out how to delete stuff - a bit of a production.

We had a great Mexican dinner there, and we wandered around a great food store called "Food City" that was just stuffed with Mexican food - I have never seen so many corn tortilla's in my entire life. Impressive. It was a good day.