FIFTY STATES AWAYRise and shine! The sun and fun was calling us today! We were finally able to go ahead and do a planned activity. I was really looking forward to today and was expecting to be in awe of our surroundings. This is one place I had never believed I would see beyond pictures.
Rather than just visiting the Grand Canyon, which was only an hours drive away from the place we were staying in Flagstaff. We decided to make an active day of it and do something most people probably never knew you could do here: bike riding!
(As requested Ma, here are some pics of us!)
After arriving at this magical place we hired bikes on site (something rather difficult to in the parks surprisingly) and we were ready to set of. They have two different cycle paths here one easier and significantly shorter than the other, we of course choose to do the difficult one, which was a massive 18 miles long in total for the round trip. Upon collecting the bikes we were told that they only had bright pink hats for Ben, he wore this shocking pink hat with pride all day long. I had a choice of colours but ultimately went with the pink as I thought Ben looked pretty cool! Although it’s bright and relatively warm it’s cold when hurtling along on the bike so we remained wrapped up hoping that this would also stave off any potential sun and/or wind burn.
The ride heading out was mainly on paved paths and downhill, which is always going to be a problem on the way back, these thoughts were far from our mind as we cycled around the incredible scenic pathways. Roaming loose were a large number of what we think are Elks? Never seen anything with its own furry scarf before! It’s quite unnerving to ride around these large animals who were not fenced off. Sometimes they get a bit spooked and make a sudden run for it, which can be somewhat worrysome, all you can do is pray they run the other way (nobody needs a bike crash with one of these).
It was an incredible natural experience and we were alone for most of our ride! A few miles in we finally made it to the actual viewing point to see the Grand Canyon, which is breathtaking! It’s just so much larger than you could ever imagine, especially as this is only one side of it!
We continued our ride up what turned out to be quite a steep hill. Unfortunately by this point I was completely shattered, regretfully we didn’t make it the whole way round but managed a respectable six or seven miles (not bad considering how little exercise we got stuck behind a desk all day). I won’t deny that looking back now I wish I had made it all the way around, but accept that I am only human and cycling at such high altitudes is very demanding and requires a higher level of fitness than your average bike ride.
After handing back the bikes, we decided to head back down towards Flagstaff and took a slightly longer more scenic route down than the one we had travelled up by. Boy were we in for a treat! It was a mix of lush green trees and mountains covered in snow. By each side of the road were wooded areas that still had some snow on the ground underneath, where the sun had not managed to penetrate through the tree cover. Around every corner were trees which seemed to perfectly frame the mountains, it was gorgeous.
After quite a tiring and active day with so much to take in we headed out for pizza at a place called Fat Olive! This restaurant had entered global pizza competitions and won! We enjoyed a scrumptious meal before heading to bed, tomorrow we are in for a long drive.
