There and Back Again, Part 1

I have come home from our vacation with renewed appreciation of the great state of Arizona.  I loved it the first time we visited, and now I love it even more.  If it had a coastline, I think it would be the perfect state!  

We spent the first week of our trip in Flagstaff, seeing the sights and hiking.  Flagstaff is at an elevation of around 7000 ft. and we had wonderful temperatures in the '70s during the day.  What we had a bit of difficulty with was getting used to such dry conditions. We had to up our water intake drastically.  

We rented a cottage I found on VRBO :

Here's the little cottage we rented in Flagstaff.  It was so CUTE, inside and out!

We could walk to the historic district from our little home-away-from-home and we were close to good restaurants and  grocery stores, etc.

Besides making sure we were drinking a lot more water, we also had to take into account the higher elevation while on our hikes. We had to go a lot slower and stop to rest a lot more.  On our hikes that took us up over 10,000 ft. The Boy and I experienced a bit of dizziness and nausea at the higher elevations.  This was not fun, but we recovered as soon as we moved down to lower elevations.

Along the Abineau-Bear Jaw Loop Trail. I don't know what the elevation was here, but  the place where we stopped for lunch was over 10,000 ft.

After lunch, The Boy and I are ready to hit the trail again. Look at that view!

The day we attempted Humphrey's Peak, which is at 12,637 ft. all three of us decided that we really didn't have to hike all the way to the Peak, so we stopped at the saddle, which is at something like 11,805 ft.  It was a challenging hike, even though the trail wasn't any rougher or more steep than trails we are used to in the Smoky Mountains.  After about 15 minutes at the saddle, I could tell that I would not do well at all on the last push to the top.  

The trailhead sign up on the saddle.

One of the views from the saddle on the Humphrey's Peak trail.

The Professor and The Boy taking a rest before we head back down.

On the days we didn't hike we went to local museums, visited cliff dwellings and other ruins, took a day trip to the Grand Canyon and found a great used book store.  We found plenty to do in Flagstaff and I actually wish that when I had to rearrange our travel plans I had extended our time in that area instead of moving on.

More to come...