Friday and Saturday: Flagstaff, Arizona

We decided to head south to Flagstaff instead of heading further into Utah. We really wanted to get to Bryce and Zion Canyons but we did explore Canyonlands and Arches a lot and we were ready to head into a city for a bit. Friday, we mostly drove. Today, Saturday, we visited the Lowell Observatory in the morning and the Wupatki National Monument all afternoon. The observatory was forever old (late 1800's which is ancient by astronomical standards) so we got a really neat look at the history of astronomy. This is the observatory that found Pluto and mapped Mars for the first time. I realized that we need to do a unit on the history of space exploration when I asked Chris if she knew where the Hubble Telescope was and she answered "somewhere in Texas?" She knows functional astronomy and using telescopes pretty well, but she needs to learn how we know what we know. Sigh, there's a unit to plan. So after, we grabbed lunch and headed to the Wupatki National Monument. This is actually two monuments back to back. One, the Sunrise something or other, was dedicated to preserving the lava beds and debris found in this area. We felt like we were walking on the moon! The Wupatki part was formed to preserve the ancient Pueblo ruins. These ruins date around 1064 b.c. and were in remarkably good shape. All in all Flagstaff was a fun day, space and culture, how can you beat that? Tomorrow we head toward Vegas.