Saturday – October 9 Grand Canyon Skywalk

 

On Saturday we had another looong day.   We got up at 4am, and left Vegas at 4:30am and drove to an area called Grand Canyon West.   This is on an Indian reservation.   It is separate from the National Park Grand Canyon area, and the Native Americans have been developing it recently to attract tourists.   In particular they get a lot of Europeans and Asians who fly or bus in from Las Vegas.   Here we put protective booties over our shoes went out onto the skywalk, a glass semicircular bridge built out over the Grand Canyon, and looked at the spectacular views of the scenery.  The best part of this area is that you have a great view of the Colorado River from the rim, which you don’t have from most of the rim views.   Helicopters flying people down to the Colorado.

  

We left Grand Canyon West at about 10am.  We drove to Kingman and had lunch at Mr. D’s Route 66 diner on Andy Devine Boulevard.  We then drove a couple of hundred miles to the Meteor  Crater.  The crater is 550 feet deep and has a 2.25 mile circumference.  It was created by a meteor that was 150 feet across about 50,000 years ago.  A piece of the meteor was recovered a few miles from the crater, about the size of a large microwave and weighs 1400 lbs.  It is very dense, mostly iron and other heavy elements.

We then drove on to Winslow Arizona where we had a gourmet dinner at the Turquoise Room in the La Posada Hotel, a classic railroad hotel built in the style of a Spanish hacienda.  The hotel was a five star hotel of the 30’s and is wonderful, filled with fantastic art and antiques.  It was staffed by the Harvey Girls.  At night the walkways are lined with luminaria.

 

After dinner we finished our long day by driving to our home away from home in Holbrook and fell asleep to whatever playoff baseball game was on that night.