Grand Canyon Afternoon

It was late November when we headed back to Phoenix from Albuquerque.  The plan was to spend 3 days in Flagstaff, visiting the Grand Canyon and environs, then head south through Sedona to Phoenix.  Well, the forecast was for SNOW!  But I had never been to the Grand Canyon, and it had been a long time since Rick had been, so we decided to adjust our plans and hope for the best.  We stayed the night just a couple of hours drive east of Flagstaff, left early, and were able to check into our Flagstaff hotel early - we dumped our bags, called the park just to make sure all was ok storm-wise, then headed to the Canyon!
We had a fabulous afternoon riding the red line:

We closed out the day with dinner and a snowy drive back to our hotel.
The good news - we got to see a surprising amount of the Grand Canyon for just one afternoon.
The bad news - the snow storm had hit; as it made no sense to sit it out in a hotel room, we checked out early and headed straight to sunny Phoenix, skipping Sedona as well.
We'll have to come back for more!

Sandia Tram*

Guess where we went!

Eh, no - not the balloon, the mountain behind it! The Cibola National Forest contains the Sandia Mountain, AND the Sandia Tram!  Which we RODE!  That is a significant accomplishment for someone who gets vertigo taking an elevator to the 60th floor (that would be me).

And this would be some unknown stranger, also apparently considering suffering (note the grip):

And another stranger, completely unaffected (note the grin):

This is the Kiwanis cabin (see it? right there at the peak?)
People actually lived there!  (That might actually be a lie.  I don't know. I didn't go that far.)

That's Albuquerque, about 5,000 ft below (People really do live there.  About half a million of 'em.)

We started out at towers one and two

Then moved on to the one-and-a-half-mile span of tram cable

Something to look forward to on the return:

Here's the other side of the mountain (yes, those are snowy peaks, not clouds)**

From the peak, you can see Mt. Taylor, Cabezon, Jemez Mountains, Ortiz Mountains, and Manzano Peak.  I don't think you can ski all the way there.  Although I understand that my uncle used to ski this slope in 1946-48, when my mother's family lived here.  That was pre-Tram...

Hiking trails run all along the top, although you can see that there is still plenty of "up" from this trail...

and LOTS of "down" :-)

It can get a little windy

and white

and pink

and orange

and blurry orange (so excuse me - no tripod, and from a moving tram)

and red

* blame Mom if there are too many pictures here - she specifically said "take lots of pictures!"  So I did.  And it was hard picking even these few from the slew of photos we took.

** did I tell you about the time I was driving to work in Iowa, looked up, and thought, "oh, what beautiful mountains!" and then realized there are no mountains in sight on the prairie - they were massed clouds on the horizon. :-(