Blogs from Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, North America

At last a free day!! – time to chill out, time to catch up on the laundry and ironing, and sort our cases out which have become more and more disorganized as time has gone on. We skip breakfast and get all our laundry completed and are organized again ready to carry on with the tour. We talk about going into Flagstaff, but decide to take it easy, and stay around the hotel. I organize a helicopter in the Grand Canyon for tomorrow. We then go to the outdoor pool, the weather is warm even though there is a bit of a wind blowing. We make use of the swimming pool and the Jacuzzi, and read by the pool. We then get changed and book a table in the hotel restaurant for an early dinner. We ... read more

No trains again today, as we take the coach to Flagstaff, which will be around 350 miles trip.We have our driver Bob again and leave at around 07:45. At the hotel last night there were people stayingwho were taking part in a rally of vintage cars from New York to Alaska. Quite a few "Brits' were taking place with MGB's, Jaguar's etc..There was also an Australian in an ozzy-built Leyland?. They are due to finish in Alaska on June 7th. The road is long with many a winding turn which leads us to.......Cortez which is on the on the edge of the Meta Verde park - on old indian ground- not much more to say about the place....... We then arrive at the "Four Corners Monument" which is where the borders of four states come together;Colorado, ... read more

When I arrived in Flagstaff from Phoenix, I went straight to the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill, right above the town. It was founded in the 19thcentury by Perceval Lowell, an astronomer, because there was not hardly any pollution by light in the area, and it was at a high altitude. A number of important research projects have been going on at the observatory during the last century. When the observatory was founded, Percival Lowell did research on canyon on Mars. The background of this research was the idea that if there was water, there could also be life on the Red Planet. Later on, researchers at the observatory started looking for the ninth planet because the movements of Uranus pointed to the fact that there was another planet beyond Neptune. When they eventually found it, ... read more

Meteor Crater and Sedona. Today we drove out to Meteor Crater, a couple of nights ago we watched Starman again just to get ready for today’s visit. We arrived and went into the visitors centre – this is not a national monument or park but a privately owned business. First we went out to look at the crater and what a size it was! Again it was hard to appreciate just how big it was, 20 american football pitches can fit into the bottom of the crater! There are telescopes situated at various points which you can look through and see certain features of the crater. One was of a rock at the top of the rim which was the size of a house, yet looked tiny. I took a picture of this rock and then ... read more

Today we awoke from our hostel in Flagstaff pretty early. Coolest lil hostel. On route 66 so lots of funky things all over the walls. And some real friendly people staying there. A few interesting characters but isn’t there always?! We had planned a big day with lots of attractios to see and had done some general directions from google maps but they seemed a bit vague and we decided to see some others while we were at one of them so headed initially to the Coconino national park which contained the Walnut Canyon, Sunset Volcano and crater and the Wupatki national monument. So, we started off at the canyon which really was incredible! Bigger than we thought. We went for a walk down into it and took some great photos! Another stunningly hot day so ... read more