The Grand Canyon.  We choose to take the train to the Grand Canyon village inside the park.  It was a very nice experience that also included a train robbery on the way back.  Unfortunately we don't have space on our blog to load all the pictures we took of the Grand Canyon.  It is really hard to see it in photos anyway.  We encourage everyone to visit this park if you can.

How cold do we look?  It was in the fifties but the wind was cold.

It was nice to have a partly cloudy day.  Having the shadows gave our pictures more depth.  

See if you can find the '7' in this picture.  If you can you'll see two vertical crevasses to the right of the number 7.  This makes this area of the Grand Canyon the first 7-11.

All this done by one river.

Can you see the north rim?  If you can you are looking over 10 miles away.

Over a mile deep.  At the bottom is a small encampment.  This would be just at the beginning of the trees you see below.

The second stop we made was to a second ancient Indian dwelling called Tuzigoot.  This dwelling is larger and northwest of Montezuma's castle.

This shot is taken from the top of Tuzigoot's only building with a roof still intact.  It shows how rooms were added over the years going down the hillside.

Inside the only building with a roof.  It was amazing to see how much lower the room temperature was from outside. 

Rendition of what these room would have looked like in the 1400's.

From Phoenix we headed toward the Grand Canyon.  Along the way we stopped at a couple of historic National parks.  The first of these was Montezuma's Castle.

Indian dwelling built into the side of a cliff.  This building contained over 20 rooms.  

Park rendition of how the rooms may have been used.  Lots of work to bring everything up into these rooms by ladders.  

While in Phoenix we went for our own balloon ride.  It was an awesome ride on a beautiful day.

Filling up the balloon

Adding hot air

Getting ready to take off

We're off with twelve others and our pilot.  

Another balloon in the air with us

Phoenix from 2,000 ft up.  Don't look straight down!

Cruising at 50 feet to see if we can spot any wildlife 

Landing back on earth.  Our pilot was able to land on the trailer with just a little guidance from the ground team.  Excellent landing!

Phoenix Arizona was our next stop.

Here we camped several miles outside of the city so we could explore the desert more.  This is the view from out of our RV window.

This is a real roadrunner.  Doesn't look much like the cartoon one does he?

We also visited the Yuma prison.  Now shut down but was once the the most feared prison in the wild west.  It is referenced in several western movies like 3:10 to Yuma.

Prison walls

Guard tower

Cell block gate

50 Caliber protection

This is the inside of the 'Dark Cell'.  I used flash to show the rough walls on the inside.  This is an empty cell 6'X10' that is pitch black when the cell door is closed.  This was for solitary confinement.  I guess adding complete darkness to the already 120 degree temperature is all that is left to do. 

 

This is a typical cell.  Six prisoners to a cell 6'X8' again.  Also in the early years women who were sentenced to prison were put in cells with 5 other men.  The prison was open for over ten years before they added a cell for women.  Eighteen months in this prison seems worse than twenty years in a prison today.

During our visit in Yuma we had balloons fly over our camp site and saw the super moon.

One morning while looking out of our window we saw these balloons flying over us.

My attempt at taking a picture of the super moon.  Unfortunately I don't have a strong enough zoom lens to capture the moon details.  The moon gave off so much light it was like daytime.

Our next stop was Yuma Arizona.  Here we were surprised to find a large farming industry.  Isn't this the desert?

This is how you make rain in the desert.  

The farms here are as large as any seen in the central US.

While visiting San Diego we visited one of their many beaches and was able to see the sun set over the Pacific ocean.

Remaining park animals we visited.  Again please leave a comment if you know any of the animals with missing names.

Bats

We were also able to walk through several bird aviaries.  These are some pictures of the birds we saw.

Black Duiker

Cheetahs

Gorilla male

Gorilla Mama and her baby.  Not sure if you can zoom this picture to see or not.  But the baby is in her arms.

Lemurs

Fennec Fox

Chinchillas 

Green Frogs

Sunrise over the Elephant exhibit

Visiting the San Diego Safari zoo.  As part of the roar and snore package you are provided a day pass to visit the remaining animal exhibits in the zoo the next day.  A final bonus to this is a guided safari tour ride around the African animal exhibits.  This is a jeep tram tour around the exhibit.  If any of this looks familiar it is because the Jurassic Park movie was modeled after this park.  Sorry I don't have all the names for the animals shown below.  If you know of any please leave a comment to let us know.

Rhinos

Vultures

Giraffe defending his food dish.