Day 11: Grand Canyon North Rim to Flagstaff

Brrr!  A chilly start to the day with some snow on the ground!  What a contrast! Bob went out early and got ice from the garage opposite the lodge, which seemed a bit superfluous! 

Our cabin and Mary's car with a light dusting of snow! 

We drove north, then east, then south and crossed the Colorado river by the Navajo Bridge at Marble Canyon where there was a good little visitor centre with some interesting memorial plaques. 

The Colorado River near Marble Canyon
and the Navajo Bridge

Memorial plaque to Mormon ferry operator and his wives...

We stopped at Cameron Trading Post - a huge emporium filled with Indian crafts.  At the back we found a grocery store where we purchased a modest sandwich lunch, which we had in the car. 

Food shopping

Then on to an excellent visitor centre at Wupatki where we learned about the Pueblo Indians who built a small village against the rock with ceremonial circles for meetings.  We drove past Sunset Crater and admired the black lava flows now forever still and fields of a'a - which is apparently the name for a particular type of extremely jagged lava.  

Wupatki Pueblo ruins

Our arrival in Flagstaff in the late afternoon was something of a culture shock after the quiet of the deserts and the canyons...Flagstaff is big, much bigger than Bob and Mary remembered, and has a complicated road system which we engaged with at rush hour!   Our standard Quality Inn motel rooms are a great contrast to the cabins at Kaibab Lodge and we have the usual two queen sized beds in the room.  We have exchanged quirky for conventional!  We went to an Italian restaurant, the Olive Garden, part of a chain that Bob and Mary like.  It was packed and we waited 45 minutes for our table, and were then disconcerted to find a large birthday party on one side and some very noisy and wriggly children behind us.  We were all a bit tired and grouchy, but fortunately the noisy ones left and our food, when it arrived was good!