Grand Canyon

I'm a bit behind with blogging and will catch up as time and energy permit.  I went to Arizona last week and missed the subzero cold snap in Colorado.  Aside from barely making my plane because the bus was late due to some icy roads my travel was not impacted thankfully.  I hate traveling enough as it is, I don't need complications.  However my aunt who I was meeting was not so lucky and her plane arrived some 4-5 hours late which meant I had to amuse myself in Phoenix while waiting for her because we were driving to Sedona in the same rental car.  There is not a lot to do in Phoenix, at least not that I could find.  Drove around downtown for ages and couldn't even find a place to eat.  And if I could there was nowhere to park anyway.  But it was cool seeing palm trees and cacti in February.  I'm not a winter getaway person, this is the first time ever that I've been somewhere warm-ish during the winter and this was due to my aunt wanting to escape Michigan's Polar Vortex Freeze-o-Rama.  It stayed mostly in the 50's in Sedona which was fine for me but maybe not what she was hoping for.  Still, so much better than the -14 degrees in Boulder and probably worse in Michigan.  Jonny said it was so cold the back door froze shut and he had to shovel a path to the front door in the subzero temps.  Can't say I was sorry to miss that.

We went to the Grand Canyon which is very cool in winter.

My aunt had never been to the Grand Canyon and she was excited to see it.  I've only been once before.  I think we're the only 2 in our family who have been there.  We didn't get to do any hiking.  Maybe at some point I'll go when I can actually hike but it's not top of my list.

Flagstaff was fun too, we had breakfast there on the way up.  Jonny and I are looking for places to possibly move to sometime in the future and Flagstaff is a maybe.  Will have to go back and spend more time there.

More photos from the rest of my trip coming soon.

It Was Grand and It Was a Canyon

The Grand Canyon was o.k. We started at the east entrance of the South Rim and worked our way to the west entrance, stopping at just about every pull out there was to take in the views. By the 4th pullout I'd about had enough but we stopped at them all anyway. The thing is so massive that it doesn't seem to matter what angle you look at it from, it all looks the same. It's beautiful and impressive but even when we hiked down a bit below the rim it still all looked the same to me. I liked it and I'm glad I went but it wasn't the coolest place I've ever been. I think the best part was seeing a tarantula crawling around at one of the pull outs.

After spending 2 days at the Grand Canyon we proceeded on to Sedona which was way cooler. The drive down Oak Canyon to Sedona was spectacular-big towering formations of red and white rock surrounded by bright yellow trees for miles and miles. We stayed up in the canyon just a bit out of Sedona and I was glad for that. The town itself seemed crowded & busy, full of endless art galleries and stores peddling all sorts of overpriced, useless yuppie crap just like Boulder. We went into town for dinner & breakfast & that was about it. We spent both days hiking in the red rocks with the dogs. Yesterday we hiked in both the Grand Canyon and Sedona so I had some tired legs but it felt good after sitting in the car for so long.

The trail today was in the Red Rocks Wilderness area so we could take the dogs but oddly enough we were the only ones with dogs on the trail. At first I thought it weird that there were so few dog people in a place like Sedona but it turned out most of the people on the trail were out of town tourists unable to travel with their dogs. We had to stop quite a bit so the dog sick tourists could get their doggy fix. Strummy ate it up, he loves attention from anyone, Cody tolerated it and Lola acted the princess that she is. The trail itself was beautiful, winding past loads of red rock formations and working it's way into a wooded canyon surrounded by more red rock. I have lots of pictures, I'll get them posted to an album eventually.

Right now I'm in our groovy RV at Westworld, the site for Nationals. They haven't let us down by the rings yet but I took a walk over to see and it's quite a circus. There was an ESPN truck driving around too, apparently they're filming parts of it. I'm waiting for America's funniest home videos to show up for us. While walking around the site the first people I saw were some folks from Colorado that I don't know that well but see all the time at trials. They're really good and have a chance of placing. I think last year one of them won or placed in the Steeplechase. Anyway, it was great to have a little chat with a familiar face after being on the road for several days.

Tomorrow there's only one event-the Time Gamble. According to the premium it's a course set by the judge and you're given a specific time that you have to complete the course in. The one who complete's the course closest to the time given wins. I've never done anything like this before, really it's meant to be a fun warm-up for the big events starting on Thurs. I don't run until around 3:30 or so so I've got plenty of time to check out everything else. Yeeha, can't wait for it all to start!