We woke up this morning on the first day of 2020 and drove in to see the sunset again. It was amazing!! The clouds in the sky helped create some spectacular colors.
After breakfast we drove along the south rim in the other direction and headed down the 25 mile stretch of Desert View Drive. It has about 6-7 viewpoints along the way and we stopped at all of them. It was still cold and was nice to get out for a few minutes and then get back in the car.
Our first stop was at Duck on a Rock....can you see it?
We then continued on...
While in the park, we learned about the Ponderosa Pines. They are all over and are a really neat pine tree. The cracks are an adaptation they have to protect them from fires...
Continuing along Desert Drive...
Our final stop on Desert Drive was at the watchtower. You could climb up to the top and the views were beautiful.
Inside the watchtower were all sorts of Native American wall paintings and artifacts.
After getting to the end of the road, we continued out the east entrance to the park and drove another 30 minutes to Cameron Trading Post. I had heard about this place on tripadvisor and wanted to try it out for lunch. They didn't disappoint!!
The landscape changed and the snow went away the closer we got to Cameron.
The wide open road was too tempting for Don and on the return trip back to the park, we had to stop and take advantage of the wide openness.....and have a little fun!
We then entered the park again from the east entrance and headed back to the hotel.
And had to stop at a few of the viewpoints that we missed on the way out.
The last 30 minutes were the same scenery we had seen at least 5 times already and the girls took advantage of that to have an early "preschool nap time...." in the car. :)
We got back to the hotel and regrouped, then headed to dinner in Tusayan. We found a nice place at another hotel and then played some cards and called it a night!
Tomorrow we would check out of our hotel and journey to Page, Arizona!
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