Thursday - Sunday, April 17 - 20, 2014 (Williams, AZ)

Thursday

Today we were headed to Williams, AZ which is just south of the Grand Canyon National Park.  It was another short travel day but we did have another mountain pass to travel over.  Fortunately for me, I decided to call my mom and have a chat since we had been without good cell coverage for several days.  So while we were having our nice long chat catching up on all the news, we went up and over the pass, which actually had two sections of about six miles each of a big climb.  The truck did really well, we just have to take it slow and steady.  The highest elevation we climbed today was at the Arizona Divide which is  7,335 feet .  Considering that in Casa Grande, we were at 1463 ft and then Cottonwood was 4826 feet we have definitely been climbing in elevation.  Williams is at 6680 ft, so after we went over the Arizona Divide we did climb down a bit.  You can definitely tell by the temps that we are at a higher elevation, it is noticably cooler during the day and night.

After we got set up and had lunch we went over and checked out the hotel which is also associated with our RV Park.  We are at the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel.  The big draw here is a train which is a 2+ hour ride that  will take you to the Grand Canyon.  We will have to check it out and see if it works into our plans.  The hotel is pretty big and has a small fitness center and indoor pool that we can use if we choose. 

Our RV site - notice the tree hasn't leafed out yet

After checking out the hotel, we walked through the historic part of town which also includes part of the Route 66 highway.  It is pretty touristy but we did walk by this place which had some live music and outdoor seating, so we stopped for a cold drink.

Cruisers

After our walk through town, we came back and had dinner and then just watched some TV for awhile.

Friday

We decided to do some sight seeing today, our plan was to visit the Sedona area.  We figured that it would be less crowded on Friday than a weekend.....how wrong we were.  The drive down was on a pretty but curvy road but unfortunately there was tons of traffic so it was pretty slow going.  It was so crowded that even the pull outs along side the road were crammed full of cars, so all our pics were taken from the car.  It was beautiful scenery, would have loved to have stopped to enjoy it some.  We were planning on doing some hiking, but with the crowds decided to pass.  I guess a lot of people must have had Good Friday off.  We should have been better organized and toured Sedona while we were in the Cottonwood area.  Oh well....here are some pics from Sedona area.

It's a pretty area, I see why so many people visit.  I would definitely come back again and try to take in some hiking, but not when it is so crowded.

Since our Sedona visit was cut short and we were only about 30 miles from Jerome which we were told is also a must see area, we decided to check out Jerome.  Jerome is an old mining town which is perched on the side of a hill and at one time had fewer than 100 residents remaining and was considered a "ghost town".  Now it is a haven for artists and has many more people living there. 

Well it was pretty crowded in Jerome, so we checked out the views from the state park and decided to head back to the 5er via the freeway, the same route we took yesterday, to get away from all this traffic.  Here are some pics from Jerome.

Jerome, perched on the side of a hill

Some old mining equipment on display

Close up of Jerome

View from Jerome back down into the Verde Valley

Some of the old dirt mining roads in the foreground



Pretty blue/green rock on display at the state park, it wasn't from the area mines, it was just pretty and BIG!



Once we got back to Williams, we went back to the Cruisers diner and had an appetizer for dinner, we didn't think we'd be hungry enough to have dinner, but sitting there smelling the wonderful BBQ aroma almost made me change my mind.  We'll have to try dinner some other night.  On our way home, we saw this horse and carriage giving rides to the tourists.

Saturday

Well since it seems to be a busy weekend, we decided to wait until Monday to visit the Grand Canyon and hopefully the crowds will have thinned out. 

Since the Safeway store is only a couple blocks down from our rv park, we decided to walk to the store and do a little grocery shopping.  It sure curbs any impulse buying when you know what you are buying has to be carried several blocks.  =) 

The day was pretty laid back and we actually had some rain showers.  It was a good day to stay home and inside.  I baked some cookies and while I was baking, Rich repaired our hand mixer.  When I went to mix up the cookie dough, the mixer was dead as a doornail.  Yikes, that's not good.  So my handyman went to work on it while I went ahead and mixed up the cookies by hand.  Rich found out that the power boost switch was bad, so he was able to wire around that switch so the mixer would work on regular speeds.  It's so nice to have a handy man around.  =)  I don't know what it is, but when I was talking with my mom the other day, she was sharing that her KitchenAid mixer of 50+ years had stopped working.  She thought she was going to have to get a new one, but she had a friend look at it and found out it just needed new brushes.  So she got some ordered and had my youngest brother put them in and now her mixer is back in action.  I'm glad because that mixer has mixed up an awful lot of yummy cookies, breads and desserts over the years. 

We took Gracie on a couple walks and the last one of the evening, we saw this steam engine off loading passengers.  We were a ways away and while we were walking closer to get a better look, the train started backing up the track to go park and we couldn't catch up with it.  We happen to stop a lady to ask why the steam engine was working today and it was the train engineers wife and she told us that the steam engine is only brought out 4 times a year and today happen to be one of them.  Too bad we didn't know that, it might have been worth a train ticket to take a ride on it.  It was a pretty cool thing to see.

Steam engine @ Williams, AZ

When it started backing up, it went really fast......

The exciting news on Saturday evening was that my oldest daughter found out she is having a baby boy in August.  Her friend was giving her a baby reveal party and I was going to use this new technology called Facetime to hear the announcement, but alas we couldn't get it to work in time, so I missed the official announcement.  I did get to see a video of it after the fact which was nice so all was not lost in the technology arena.

Sunday

Happy Easter - He is Risen!  Hallelujah to that.  We attended a local foursquare church for our Easter Service.  We had planned on walking across the street to attend an Assembly of God church, but as we started walking over, there were no cars....hmmm that's odd.  We decided to walk back and get the truck and see if in the meantime anyone else showed up.  We drove over to the parking lot because there was one car that had shown up, we waited around a bit and only three more cars showed up, so we decided that we would prefer a bigger crowd today so headed over to the Canyon Chapel foursquare church.  They had a very nice Easter Sunday service and we were glad we decided to attend this church.  The kids put on a little program and kids are always so fun to watch.  This church had a lot of young families which is always a good thing to see in a church.

We had a pretty relaxed afternoon, Rich put a turkey on to cook and I worked on getting our blog caught up.  It's starting to smell really good in here. 

While I was working on the blog, I got a text from my oldest daughter who got married this afternoon in a small ceremony.  She had a big weekend, a baby reveal party yesterday and a marriage ceremony today.  I missed these two events, but God willing, I will be there for the baby's birth.  They also plan to have a wedding reception this summer when we are back in the area for family and friends so we will get to celebrate with them then. 

Amber & Norm wedding pic

Well I'm signing off to go finish up my part of the turkey dinner preparations, getting the potatoes and vegetables ready. 

Tomorrow our plan is to head to the Grand Canyon, I'm so excited.  We should have some pretty pictures posted in the next couple of days.