Gold Wing Adventures in Petrified Forest

We finally got the bike down at Grand Canyon and took one long trip out into the desert but forgot to take pictures so.... when we got to the Petrified Forest and took it out for a ride we took some photos.

Parked at the south entrance

GREAT photo of Kim

Another one of those sappy self-portraits....we look a bit happy huh?

Just wanted to document where we stopped.

It got warmer as the day went on...witnessed by the coats on the bike.

That's all for now.

Meteor Crater in Arizona

We left Grand Canyon by the east entrance and headed down to Flagstaff for some groceries, lunch and an additional battery for my Droid Bionic phone. Gorgeous tree-covered high desert...BUT, once we got outside of Flagstaff, we ran into real horizons !

This is the way it looked for about 25-30 miles toward the famous Metor Crater.
http://www.meteorcrater.com/

I went here as a kid but don't remember much of it so Kim and I were determined to visit it .... and it was well worth the side trip off highway 40. We cruised around the visitor's center, then went outside to look at the crater itself. WOW !!!!

It is so big that there could be 20 football fields inside of it and a million people watching around the rim ! over 500 feet deep, 4,000 feet across and over 2 miles around.

Our RV is the one with the white van behind it.

view from the rim looking north

our RV in the parking lot

our guide, Eduardo

I made a movie to show the expanse. Pertty darn cool.

Next stop: Petrifed Forest and Painted Desert...staying at OK RV in Holbrook, AZ...nice town.

Grand Canyon (and it IS Grand!)

Next Stop: Grand Canyon, Arizona. 292 miles. Nice drive through the stark Arizona desert...

The Grand Canyon is so huge that photos cannot convey it all properly. It's more than a mile down from the photos you're about to see. The entire canyon is over 277 miles long and, at most spots we were at, it's 10 miles across. The two movies following the photos might help with some perspective.

This is one of the few viewpoints where you can see so much of the Colorado River. Many of the others, the river can only be seen a tiny bit or not at all. This viewpoint is called Watchtower and it's the very first lookout if you enter from the east.

We got up at sunrise to take photos. That darn sun is getting up later and later.

...and a few at sunset....

There was also many deer and elk hanging around the roads and our campground. They were not afraid of humans so we could get real close to take photos.

This fellow liked to pull down the juniper branches with his rack in order to get to the berries for some snacks.

These photos can also be seen at this link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100376105788369441882/GrandCanyon#

Next stop: Meteor Crater, Arizona.