Bob - The Plan

We are off! I am sitting on the plane with Roberta, Nathan, and Julie as we are winging our way to Phoenix, AZ.

We began planning this trip months ago; made our flight reservations and reserved a room at the Grand Canyon for a week, knowing we wouldn't stay there the whole time. But with busy work schedules for Julie and I both we didn't get around to what, for me anyway, is often one of the most enjoyable parts of a trip, the planning, until just a couple of weeks before we departed. Even then, without my brother David's input-he suggested a full trip itinerary for us-I'm not sure what we would be doing. With only some slight modifications we are following the plan David suggested.

We are scheduled to arrive in Phoenix about 12:30pm and the Gullen's have invited us for lunch. Actually they very graciously invited us to stay and visit for a couple of days, but we declined. Much as I'm sure we would enjoy the visit we have scheduled a lot for our time in Arizona-perhaps more than we can do in the 7 days we will be there. After lunch with Gullen's we plan to drive on to Wickenburg and spend the night there. We want to see the Desert Callaberras Museum which has a collection of western art and currently has an exhibit of western art by women titled, "Cowgirl Up!" Wickenburg is also a center for "Dude" ranches-some of up to 20,000 acres-but there will not be any City Slickers action for us there!

From Wickenberg we will go on to Prescott and see Granite Dells then travel on tothe Grand Canyon. We do not expect to arrive there until late in the day. This will be Sunday night. We will spend two more nights, Monday and Tuesday there staying at the El Tovar Hotel, right on the Canyon edge.

Wednesday morning we will get up early for the drive to Page. Along the way we plan to stop at Horseshoe Bend. We will spend two nights in Page. Thursday we plan to take an all day boat tour to Rainbow Bridge. It is the longest natural bridge in the US and can only be reached by boat and a 1 mile hike or (without boat) by a 13 mile hike. We are indebted to David for recommending this and much of the rest of our itinerary.

After we leave Page we drive to Sedona and will spend the night there before flying out of Phoenix the next morning. We go from Phoenix to Oregon for a week with Julie's folks in Sweet Home.