Eleven! Part 2

With the thunderstorms rolling in, we headed back down the mountain.  It was past 4 by then so we headed to our hotel and checked in. 

Little America in Flagstaff is a great place to stay.  The rooms are dated but spacious, comfy and clean.  The staff is pleasant and helpful and the grounds are nice.  They were doing some construction on the property while we were there.  It looks like they were doing some more landscape design.  The area outside our window wasn't under construction, thankfully.  Our view was quite a welcome sight to our desert dwelling eyes.

Our Room

View from our balcony

 

We unpacked, called home, then set out to walk around the grounds.  We went by the pool, which you can catch a glimpse of in the last picture, just beyond the fir trees.  It was a nice pool area, lots of decking a huge pool and hot tub.  We continued on our walk around the grounds looking for the walking trail.  We found the playground and horseshoe pit, sand volleyball court and just beyond those, the trail head to their walking trail.  

A month earlier there had been a couple of huge forest fires that were around Flagstaff.  We knew one was just south of the hotel but we weren't sure exactly where.  On our drive up to Flagstaff and the little bit of driving around the area, we hadn't seen any signs of recent fires, until we went on our walk. 

In my last post I mentioned one reason we picked Little America was because of this 3 mile trail.  We were saddened to see the remains of the trail.  For more info on the Hardy fire that threatened Little America and the surrounding neighborhoods, click here. 

The beginning of the trail

 One of many huge piles of burned trees

Trees were tagged w/ colored tape for removal

Where the trail begins to loop back around there is a field.  Across the field you can see all the trees in there are burned. :(

Even though the fire had been out for a few weeks, the smell of smoke was still strong in the air.  Instead of the refreshing pine smell, it smelled like a smoky fireplace.  Even with the majority of trees burned and slated for removal, we saw plenty of birds, mainly huge ravens, picking through the trees looking for something.  My nature lover spotted a couple of blue birds flitting around in the trees as well.  

Can you make out the blue blur in the tree? That's our bluebird. :)

 By the time we looped back around to the trail head, it was late and hadn't eaten yet.  We decided instead of going out to eat we'd eat at the hotel restaurant.  We ate over in the lounge area, right by the window and enjoyed the antics of the Abert Squirrels that were scampering around outside.

After a light dinner we headed back to our room where we painted our nails and talked about where we wanted to head the next morning.  Looking through all the information I brought, A. picked The Grand Canyon!  Knowing we had a big drive and hiking day ahead of us the next morning, we went to bed and we both slept really well waking up the next morning early and eager to head out to The Grand Canyon. :)