This week marks our 10th wedding anniversary, wowza! To celebrate Bert and I headed north to the grand canyon. Neither of us had been and it was really past due that we visit and see this wonder for ourselves. We took the scenic route and stopped along the way which made for a really lovely road trip. We always reconnect really well on road trips and this was no different. It was lovely.
First stop was breakfast in Sedona. Always a wonderful place to visit. I never get tired looking at the red rock mountains. They calm me so and leave me feeling at peace.
Then we drove through scenic oak creek canyon and stopped at a viewpoint about 20 miles outside of Flagstaff.
Once in Flagstaff we had lunch downtown at a place called Mountain Oasis. Really great stop for a sandwich. I can't believe all the times we have been to Flagstaff we never went downtown. I felt like we totally missed out all these years - it was a really nice downtown area.
Bert was a good sport here, I wanted to take a photo of the pretty canyon painting above his head. I think the artist is Lynn Mathews and I want to check out her work more. I had a portobello burger pictured below and Bert had roast beef with pepper and onions with a super yummy pasta salad. Such a great lunch!
Finally we arrived at the Grand Canyon. It was really massive and beautiful. We had a great stay at El Tovar which is right on the canyon. We literally walked out the hotel and it was right there.
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| That's our hotel El Tovar on the side of the canyon. |
There was a fire on the North Rim about 10 miles away over the canyon, the winds pick up in the evening and it filled the canyon with smoke. Around 5pm was the worst of it, we ended up going inside for awhile as breathing was tough. We went back out around 7pm before dinner and the air was a bit better. It was the perfect time of day to see the canyon. All the tourists seemed to be at dinner so, it was really quite and peaceful. Just gorgeous. I couldn't get over how blue the rocks were.
Our dinner was at 8pm - we got dressed up a little and had a lovely fine dining experience at El Tovar. The food was delicious and being that it was a little later in the evening it was quiet and romantic as was our late night canyon stroll. Just perfect.
I love this man!
I don't think I got how big it was right away - I needed time to take it in, a few different angles, viewpoints and times of day helped me gain the full perspective (and we only really saw a small portion of it). We woke up the next morning and walked along the Trail of Time, it really hit me how amazing this canyon was. We saw a red condor, some squirrels and lots of birds. I was excited that we had binoculars in the car to see even more but, when we looked they weren't there. I think I took them out for Hudson one day so, I bet they are in the garage. Oh well - next time. We are already talking about going again someday.
