Vacation Plan, Additional Thoughts
Aug. 26th, 2009 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribI mentioned that I'm planning a vacation to the Grand Canyon. Well, I talked to my Rotarian friend from Arizona, Chris Reilly (he's from Tucson, not Phoenix) and he suggested flying into Albuquerque New Mexico instead of Phoenix. The state capital and one of the oldest cities in the US, Santa Fe is very close, and Los Alamos lab is also nearby, with a museum about the atomic bomb.
Going west from Santa Fe, you have to drive right through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest National Park. Per Mapquest, the drive Santa Fe to Flagstaff, AZ is about 5 hours, so a couple of hours of scenery-looking is very do-able.
Reilly also suggested staying in Flagstaff as a base for the Grand Canyon. There's a bit more to do there in the evening, including a visit to Lowell Observatory, situated on Mars Hill. It's the observatory that discovered the Object Formerly Known As A Planet Pluto.
Mapquest tells me the Flagstaff - Las Vegas drive is about 4 hours, so if I really wanted to make a side trip and see the London Bridge at Lake Havasu I could. Or skip it - not sure I want to look at a bridge, and I've been to London.
My only heartburn in this trip is that I have discovered that renting a car in one city and leaving it in another is more expensive then returning it to the same place. It would be different if I had to buy two or three airplane tickets, but considering that it's every bit of a two-day drive from Chicago to New Mexico, and the same back, I suspect that the cost is a push for a single traveler.
Going west from Santa Fe, you have to drive right through the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest National Park. Per Mapquest, the drive Santa Fe to Flagstaff, AZ is about 5 hours, so a couple of hours of scenery-looking is very do-able.
Reilly also suggested staying in Flagstaff as a base for the Grand Canyon. There's a bit more to do there in the evening, including a visit to Lowell Observatory, situated on Mars Hill. It's the observatory that discovered the Object Formerly Known As A Planet Pluto.
Mapquest tells me the Flagstaff - Las Vegas drive is about 4 hours, so if I really wanted to make a side trip and see the London Bridge at Lake Havasu I could. Or skip it - not sure I want to look at a bridge, and I've been to London.
My only heartburn in this trip is that I have discovered that renting a car in one city and leaving it in another is more expensive then returning it to the same place. It would be different if I had to buy two or three airplane tickets, but considering that it's every bit of a two-day drive from Chicago to New Mexico, and the same back, I suspect that the cost is a push for a single traveler.
