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Arizona

What A Great Day!

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As if this:

 
Or this:


 
Or this: 


 
Or even this:


 
Were not enough reason to call it a good day, someone came by my work station today and brought this:


 
She said she had had a visitor who left them behind, and she would not ever eat them, so she gave them to me.

And then, another co-worker came by a few minutes later, and brought this:


 
A half dozen home made chocolate chip gluten free cookies. Okay, I ate three of them, and they were yummy!  He said a friend of his is starting a gluten free company in Tucson, and when she came to visit she brought these for me. Well, by then, I was feeling really extra special and very loved.  And then, another person came by and brought this:


 
She had been down to Flagstaff, and was shopping at Frontier Foods, and when she saw their gluten free aisle, she thought of me. And that Cranberry Pomegranate juice? Because she knew I had that kidney stone last week, and just wanted me to have it. 

People, I am so high on this spontaneous show of love from these people!  I can’t tell you how good this made me feel today.  I can hardly wait for tomorrow…
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Becky and the Parents, Day Four: The Grand Canyon

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After our whirlwind trip around southern Utah and northern Arizona, we were back home at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We took Becky on a tour of  Cape Royal and Point Imperial. We stopped on the way up to Cape Royal and took a short hike over to Greenland Lake. The lake was dried up this late in the season, but the hike was still gorgeous!


 
 
Becky on the trail to Greenland Lake

 
That’s the lake, all dried up this late.



The next stop was Cape Royal, at Wedding Point. There are Becky and FabGrandpa near the edge. The day was very windy but sunny and nice. 

 
The view from Wedding Point.


 
Looking over the edge–it’s a long way down there!


 
Gorgeous, as usual!


 

 
Walhalla Overlook–that light brown crescent near the center of this photo is the Colorado River.


 
  
This is Mount Hayden, at Point Imperial. 


 
Another view from Point Imperial


 
That night we had reservations for dinner at the restaurant at the lodge. The view from there at sunset is awesome!


 
This view is from the veranda at the rear of the lodge, at sunset. Oooooooo, Ahhhhhhh, awesome!


 
That was our last night with Becky. She left the next day around noon, headed for Las Vegas to spend the night before returning to Atlanta.  We all shed tears as we said our good byes. We really enjoyed our visit, and all the sights we saw.   
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Becky and The Parents Day 2, Antelope Canyon Tour

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We spent the night in Page, at Amerca’s Best Value Inn, which turned out not to be what it’s name claimed. For only $116 per night, we were allowed to listen to the crackheads upstairs from us stomp around their room until well after 3 a.m.  I really don’t know what they were doing up there, maybe they had a bad case of Montuzema’s Revenge and had to run to the bathroom repeatedly during the night, who knows? But, I can tell you this: They kept me awake most of the night, and the maids said their room was trashed the next morning.  At any rate, I would not recommend staying at that motel even if it is the only one in Page with vacancies. I’m just sayin!

After leaving the motel and eating breakfast, we went on a guided tour of Antelope Canyon. Wow! OMG!  I have been wanting to go there forever! I am so glad we got to go on that tour. It is so fabulous. I took over 150 pictures, but I will only be showing a few of those here.  I checked them out online, and all the different tour companies websites quoted prices of $32 per person for the one and a half hour tours.  But, we walked in and paid for our tour in person, and for three of us it was only $88. It was the best $88 we spent all weekend. 

 
We rode out to the slot canyon site in this big four wheel drive vehicle. It was a very bumpy ride in places, but it was fun.


  
 There are Becky and FabGrandpa on the truck, waiting to take off to the Navajo Reservation.



We bumped down this road, which is actually a wash when the rains come. Notice the power lines–there is a nuclear power plant nearby.

 
We finally got there, and got out of the truck. The ground is very fine sand, which made walking difficult, but we managed to do it. Becky was wearing flip-flops, and I had on sneakers. My shoes were full of sand at the end of the tour.


  
This is the entrance to the slot canyon.
  
It is so hard to describe this canyon to someone who has never been there. It is very deep and narrow. The sun shines through the top of the canyon and makes the inside glow orange and red. At different times of the day beams of light come in and iluminate the walls of the canyons. It is absolutely amazing!
  
Of the many pictures I took, a lot of them are not very good. These are some of the best ones. You can get a “Photographer’s Tour” for a little more money. You get to stay longer, and the guides give you more time to take pictures at each stop along the way of the tour.

  
The tour guide took the photo above for me. He was very helpful in letting people know what settings to use on their cameras, and in some places he took photos with each person’s camera for us, to make sure we got some good shots.  
 

There we are, back on the truck after an hour and a half of tour time in the canyon. It was an awesome tour, one of the best tours I have ever been on.  The only thing about this tour I was not happy with, was that there are five tour companies that take people on tours of this canyon each day. There were probably close to 300 people in the canyon at one time. Considering that it is a very narrow canyon, it was very crowded.   However, that was a very small price to pay for such great tour, and to get to see the place with my own eyes. I want to go tour the same canyon again, at a different time of day.  

If you ever get a chance to go to Arizona, Page has to be on your list of places to go, and this tour has to be top of the list!

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Becky and The Parents Day 1

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We left the North Rim headed for Page, Arizona early enough to have breakfast at Jacob Lake Inn.  We stopped at the scenic overlook of House Rock Valley.  Here is Becky with the Vermillion Cliffs in the background. 


The next stop was at the balancing rocks near Cliff Dwellers in Marble Canyon.  Those rocks are huge! How they don’t tumble over is a miracle to me!

 
This is a view of the Colorado River from Navajo Bridge. It is absolutely gorgeous!


 
 
And this is looking across at the other side of the bridge at the very eastern edge of the Grand Canyon.

 
We stopped for lunch at Fiesta Mexicana, where Becky and I both ordered Camarones a la Plancha. Yummo!  
  
After lunch we toured Glen Canyon Dam. It is the second highest dam in the United States. The highest is of course the Hoover Dam.


 
 
This is one of the old turbine rotors. Th original on was placed in service in 1964, and was replaced this year. That is FabGrandpa’s backside there in the photo.

 
Lake Powell, so much blue, blue water in the middle of the desert.


 
 
The Colorado River where it comes out of Lake Powell at the Glen Canyon Dam. That bridge is Hwy 89 in Page. 

 
See that water pouring out of the pipe at the bottom? That is what they call seepage, water that seeps through the concrete and rock from behind the dam. 1600 gallons a minute worth of seepage. Amazing! And there is enough moisture for those plants to grow right on the rocks.  

More tomorrow!
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4-Wheeling to Point Sublime

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Sunday morning FabGrandpa and I got up early, thinking we were going to get the laundry done and relax for the rest of the day. Then Mark, our neighbor, came over and asked if we wanted to go out to Point Sublime.  I have been wanting to go out there since we got here last year, but it takes a 4 wheel drive, high clearance vehicle to go. The road is a very rough service road, that is not maintained.  The 18 mile drive takes about an hour, so the round trip of 36 miles is a pretty good half day trip. 

 
Mark’s Jeep only seats two people, so another friend, Dennis, went too. I rode with Mark, and FabGrandpa rode with Dennis.  The photo above is the beginning of the road, just past the Widforss Trail trailhead. 


 
 
We drove through forest, then meadow, then thick forest again. There was a huge hawk soaring above us in the meadow, but I didn’t get a chance for a photo. 

 
This meadow is more rocky than other ones I have seen here so far, and the road through here was very bumpy. 


 
 
It was a perfect, beautiful day–about 70 degrees, a slight breeze, sunshine and big puffy white clouds.  Thats Dennis’s truck up ahead of us. 

 
We stopped at a scenic point, a narrow fin of rock jutting out into the canyon. It was a gorgeous view, but not at the end of the road yet. That is Mark and FabGrandpa out there on the fin.


 
 
Yes, of course I went out there, too. I’m not afraid of heights at all. 

 
After a short break, we were back in the vehicles to go the rest of the way to the end of the road. The view out there really is sublime!  


 
 
If you click on this photo to make it bigger, you may be able to see the water. I think it was the Colorado River, but not sure. This view is awesome–that point is covered with trees, they look like shrubs from here. 

 
This was a view from the edge, looking back towards the road.  I like this photo, the sky was so beautiful that day!


 
 
Dennis and FabGrandpa just enjoying the view.  Yes, standing on the edge, again.

 
I know I keep saying this is gorgeous, beautiful, and awesome, but I can not think of any other way to describe it. 


 
 
Point Sublime, at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. 

 
And yes, that is me, sitting on the edge of the world, at Point Sublime, while the laundry waits for another day.


 
And eventually, we had to leave, and head on home.
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