Monday 16th - day 27.
Flagstaff to Grand Canyon to Navajo National Monument, Monument Valley.
Well, that was a very short night! Despite this we all seemed to wake up easily enough considering it was 4.45am! It was very dark outside - the stars and a fine sliver of a crescent moon seemed very bright.
We drove the hour or so to Flagstaff airport, and Chris checked in. After fond and sad farewells and many hugs we waved Chris off and watched his plane take off towards Phoenix.
It was still lovely and cool outside at 7.15am, although weather forecasters were predicting temperatures of 97 degrees today.
Rather than look around Flagstaff and go somewhere for breakfast to console ourselves we decided to drive straight back to Grand Canyon and hike another trail whilst the temperatures were comfortable.
We hiked the Bright Angel trail (Chris’s return route yesterday). This was a great choice because it was in shade for quite s large part of the time. It was busier than yesterday evening but only for the first section, which has some tunnels and rock paintings. The lower sections were a bit steeper and soon the trail became much quieter and there were times when we felt completely alone, albeit briefly. It was easier to see the river canyon below, and the bright sunshine illuminated the rocks more clearly than last night, giving some great photographs.
The strange thing about hiking in the canyon is, of course, that the easy bit of the hike comes first, and we came across a number of people struggling back up the trail having apparently bitten off more than they could chew.
We allowed ourselves twice our downward journey time for our return journey back up, but to our surprise, we found the two sections took almost exactly the same time - possibly an effect of sleeping at altitude for a few days, or maybe it was all the photo stops on the way down!
We stopped to eat our picnic at our turn around point and emerged back at the rim at about 1.30pm.
We bought some iced latte coffees and some Wi-fi to help us plan the next few days and were back on the road by 3pm, heading north east towards Moab and the Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.
This was a long drive - about 315 miles, mostly on long straight roads through the desert. I caught up with several days of diary writing and we listened to the concluding chapters of Peter May.
As dusk fell we stopped at the next camp site that I found on the app. Another freebie, this one at the Navajo National Monument between Tuba City and Kayenta.
There was no internet, do we relied on GPS co-ordinates to locate the spot, 10 miles up a side road, off highway 160. We had no idea what to expect as we wound our way up the narrow road to an elevation of 7272 feet.
We were surprised when, on arrival the road opened onto three lanes of new tarmac and a beautifully laid out collection of camping spots spread out over the side of the hill. In fact there turned out to be two camping areas - both free - Sunrise view and Canyon view - we chose the former and although the sunset had gone, the stars and Moon put on a great show in the cold, clear, black sky.