Day 8 (01.05.2010)
We stayed the night at Kristen’s grandparents in Mesa and enjoyed some quality time with them (and their cats). In fact, we had a stowaway in the morning who had to be shooed away before Mary took him home to Boston.
Well, Boston via the Grand Canyon, of course. What’s a trip across the country without seeing the Grand Canyon?! So we headed north out of Phoenix, jumping off I-17 (where we bought the most expensive gas of the trip - over $3/gal!) to drive through Sedona. Our atlas said it was a “scenic drive”, but we had no idea. I-17 outside of Phoenix began with rolling desert hills studded with Saguaro cacti, became steeper hills covered in brush as far as the eye could see, turned into a plateau, and took us down into a valley.
Then we turned on to NM 179 and… wow.
Turns out that Coconino National Forest contains an area called Red Rocks Country. Sedona is in the heart of these rock formations. It was amazing. We then wound our way back uphill on roads with 15 MPH curves (it made me think of the Kanc!) and out to Flagstaff.
From Flagstaff we drove north through more National Forest (Coconino and Kaibab) and the Navejo Indian Reservation, which was beautiful but man, did the US Government give them some barren land. After passing Little Colorado Canyon, an impressive crevasse, we arrived at Grand Canyon National Park.
