Wednesday the 17th we were, as usual, on our way early - but this time not too early. The detour of the day started near Grants, only an hour west of Albuquerque, and we figured it'd better be light when we got there ;). We drove up rte 117 at 8:15 AM with the warm colors of the morning sun. It's called El Malpais, an area with natural arches and lava (the mountain slowly erupted 3000 or so years ago and send fingers of lava all over the landscape) and lots of other stuff. We stopped at an overlook and then drove as far as their natural bridge, took some pics, and when Opa was starting to loose his internet and phone connection we turned around and went back to rte 40. Here also enough to explore for another visit.

From Grants we made the last push to Flagstaff. To be precise, to Parks just past Flagstaff, where the RV spent the summer. The mountains behind the city already have snow and they had night frost a few times this week, but it still gets to be a lovely temperature in the afternoons. I brought a big box of Lindt chocolates for the lady of the house, because she has had  this monster bus in her backyard the whole summer, and, besides, we wanted to "borrow" a bit of water and electricity. This worked excellently. She loves chocolate, and the water and electric was no problem. The RV batteries were completely dead, but by Thursday morning they had enough power to start the engine. And meanwhile the lights, the microwave, the heater, and the waterpump (read, the indoor plumbing) worked as well. Quickly got some groceries, cooked our own dinner, and got early to bed. Especially Henk, who took over my cold...
We haven't adjusted to any time zones yet so we were awake early again on Thursday morning. Got to the RV service place before 8 (and 34 degrees Fahrenheit), our appointment was at 8:30, and people started to trickle in about a half hour later. The heating didn't work in the building so we repaired to the McDonalds across the road: coffee, cookies, free WiFi, lunch, ice tea. Meanwhile the RV endured a 45 point inspection, oil change, and a little repair to the fridge. Finally, around 3 we were free to go. Yeay! And enough time left in the afternoon to drive most of the way to Kanab in Utah. This is a little known town for no good reason, because it's located in the exact most perfect spot between Zion NP, Bryce Canyon NP, the Grand Canyon North Rim, Grand Staircase Escalante - and it's the home of the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

The road from Flagstaff to Kanab goes over route 89. A good and pretty quiet two-lane road through Navajo country, much of the way along a very tall red cliff, with along the base large rounded mounds of grey mudstone. These are the next few layers up from the ones that the Grand Canyon is carved into. We drove along these Vermillion Cliffs for miles, and when we got to the Colorado River "valley", the road cut up into the cliff face to the top, where we stopped at one of the most breathtaking vantage points. Lake Powell on the right, the beginning of the Grand Canyon ahead and to the left, another wall of Vermillion Cliffs ahead... As the man from BLM said this morning, on a clear day you can see 200 million years from there...

We stopped at WalMart in Page, at the Glen Canyon Dam, because it was almost 6 (Arizona time) and Henk had a phone meeting scheduled. To our delight a pleasantly quiet night. It gets noisy at the 24-hr WalMarts sometimes...

It's now Friday the 19th, and I'm catching up on myself. We left Page at 8:30 Arizona time.  From Page we crossed the bridge over the Colorado River, stopped to admire Lake Powell, and then turned west on rte 89 towards Kanab, a mere 72 miles.We stopped at a BLM visitor center for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which takes up an enormous part of southern Utah. We got one of those picture books with the best photos ever, and we got a great explanation of all those rock layers. Plus a printout. We somehow missed the spot where the trailhead for the recommended short walk is, and therefore arrived by 11 o'clock Utah time (normal mountain time) in Angel Canyon, a few miles north of Kanab, at Best Friends. They have a few RV sites, and we wanted to check if we could stay there before checking in at an RV park in town. No luck. But we had lunch in their cafeteria-with-gorgeous-view, took the sanctuary tour in the little bus, and did the required volunteer training. Tomorrow we're going to hang with the kitties in the morning and work on winterizing the bunny cages in the afternoon. Should be fun.