Breakfast was wonderful at the Pueblo Cultural Center. Jill had a blue corn meal porridge with nuts, seeds and fruit. I had Superfood pancakes - three massive ones. I gave one to Jill and ate one and a half of the remaining two. They also were made with blue corn meal and a host of healthy nuts and grains. Really good and this meal took care of lunch too, with the exception of a shared apple!
Off to the Painted Desert. Jill wrote in our log:
“The area for miles is flat prairie and then suddenly you are looking over a canyon that stretches for miles and miles. It is full of scrub covered rocky hills and valleys and the colors are those gorgeous desert shades of peach and salmon, red brick, lavender, indigo, sandy brown and gray. The grandeur of it is overwhelming. What God hath wrought!“
The wind was fierce the whole trip and tiring to drive with maximum concentration on the nearly five hour journey from Albuquerque to Williams. Nice to share the driving.
Our next stop was Walnut Canyon National Monument. This is a really cool place to visit and overlooked by most people who are here to see the Grand Canyon. Here you can walk the Island trail that takes you around a mile loop of an outcropping of the canyon that winds through the homes that were built under the overhanging rocks. (You get the added benefit of adding 800 stairs to your daily step count!) How these people lived was extraordinary. Water was obtained by a steep and long descent to the intermittent stream and carried by one clay pot at a time and stored in pottery vessels for the dry season. They farmed the flat land above, hunted and lived in a community of about 200-300 homes from around 1000 to 1250 and then abandoned the site. The people here merged into the Hopi but still revere the site and remember those “who stayed behind.”
Arrived in Williams at an unexpectedly large - read Disneyesque - hotel. Found a good dinner at the Pine Diner, once again Spike scores. The pie was so good that Spike is given a few days reprieve for not finding good ice cream. Still….
One of the overlooks at the Painted Desert
The VC at the Painted Desert portion of park was once a small hotel and restaurant and this is the restored 1940’s lunch counter.
Walnut Canyon
Did I mention the pancakes?