Into Arizona

We are so thankful that we made the decision to drive straight to AZ and not drive to IL for Patty's visit. Between the winter storm "Atlas" and all of the tornadoes reported in the plains, we would have been caught in one or both of those areas. The worst that we experienced on this trip to AZ was wind and a little bit of rain in Provo, UT. Yesterday was crystal clear and warm - a perfect day for travel.

It was about 7:45 AM when we hit the road yesterday AM. It was another pleasant day and a day filled with unusual and beautiful views. The drive from Kanab, UT along state route 89 was another reminder of the changing geography and the hills. These are just some of the photos taken along that stretch of highway, from Kanab to Page, AZ:

The Glen Canyon Dam is just before the town of Page, and we stopped to take a photo, even though the views were not the best from this particular location:

The water level was low and there was no water being released from the dam into the canyon.

We had to take a temporary road that was built along a 20 mile stretch of route 89 out of Page as a result of a landslide. It was funny driving along this temporary road and spotting all of the "rest areas" about every mile or so:

Basically, the drive from Page to Flagstaff was boring and not as pretty as the rest of our journey from Jackson, but we still captured these photos of some of the landscape:

We had forgotten that AZ was in a different time zone and we actually gained an hour on this leg of our trip. So, we were arriving in Flagstaff just after the noon hour when we thought we were there at 1 PM. The view of the San Francisco Peaks was excellent with all the fall colors:

At 1 PM local time, we pulled into the Thousand Trails campground:

The site where we wanted to stay for the 3 nights we will be here is the same one we stayed on the last time we visited a year ago. The site has no sewer hookup, so we emptied the tanks before driving to the site and setting up. Below is a shot of our site:

 

It is a huge site and we like it because we can park the truck behind us in the lodge parking lot.

We made it to AZ and are just about to our location in Peoria where we will spend the winter at Lake Pleasant. Today we will run a couple errands - the most important of which is to the DMV in Cottonwood to renew Josie's license. We then plan to visit the Cliff Castle Casino for our first visit to a casino in several months...