Today, after our stay at the hotel in Flagstaff, we were to continue our journey. As I didn’t want to miss out on the area around Flagstaff, we dropped off at Canyon Vista Campground and hiked a few miles, including some routes I already knew.
Afterwards, the trail became particularly beautiful and rocky. However, the day was quite short as we set off late and I didn’t want to hike too far so that I could visit the National Monument the next day.
Our start was delayed as the national monument I wanted to visit didn’t open until 9am. This only meant a small detour and a $15 entrance fee for some more attractive trails and an interesting visitor center with fresh water and restrooms.
Shortly afterwards, the trail unfortunately became rather monotonous, and the section through Painted Canyon was also rather unspectacular. After we crossed the first interstate, it was also very noisy for a long time.
Once we reached Highway 89, we found a gas station where we had coffee and a slushie. After that, the road became much more scenic and mountainous again. We spent the night north of Flagstaff after passing the 600-mile mark.
The night was very cold and there was a lot of snow on the way around the San Francisco Peaks. After nine miles we made a little detour to the Snow Bowl. The ski resort in Arizona – yes, really, even Arizona has a ski resort! There we had hot coffee and something to eat, and on top of that we were given Skittles as a gift. We besieged the restaurant until the afternoon and took the opportunity to recharge all our devices.
This was followed by a long, snowy descent, which was great fun but also quite exhausting, as we kept sinking into the snow up to our hips and had to free ourselves from it first. We only went as far as we had to in order to find a good place to camp, which was supposed to be next to a dirt road.
