The free breakfast at the Sleep Inn was a bit on the light side. Compared with other hotels I’ve stayed at, the selection was minimal – a couple cereals, donuts, biscuits and gravy.
After a morning rain, we headed to a neighborhood park and let the kids play for a while.
After lunch we drove about 45 minutes north of Flagstaff on Highway 89A to two National Monuments. Admission is $5 per adult.
The Wupatki National Monument features stops at five prehistoric pueblos. All five are short hikes on paved trails from parking areas. In addition to seeing the ruins and remains, the views of the San Francisco mountains in one direction and the Painted Desert in the other direction are astounding.
Wupatki is several thousand feet lower than Flagstaff and is about 10-20 degrees warmer.
A 35-mile road loops from Wupatki to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. We drove with eyes wide open at the beauty. The landscape seemed to continuously change from desert shrubs and flowers to grasslands to forest. On our hikes we came across several collared lizards, while we slowed our car to a stop when we spotted a coyote in the grass just off the road.
Sunset Crater Volcano, towering 2,000 feet above us, was formed in a series of eruptions 800-1,000 years ago. Lava rock is everywhere and the sides of the volcano and many other “hills” in the area are finely crushed black rock.
There are several trails to hike, although we opted against it since we were traveling with the kids and had already worn them out.
Our roundtrip from Flagstaff took between 3-4 hours.
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