All posts tagged: El Tovar Lodge

A Grand Day

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Monday dawned clear, sunny, and beautiful over Grand Canyon, and we made the best of it.  The crowds thinned considerably from Sunday, so we could hike, eat, and enjoy all there is to see at our own pace. On Sunday, we stopped to talk with a ranger and had looked through his telescope to see one of the California Condors in his nest.  These remarkable birds — now being re-established in the wild after having a brush with extinction — have a 9′ wing span, fly at about 55 miles per hour, and can soar to 20,000 feet and then coast for two hours. So imagine our surprise on our way to breakfast on Monday when a California Condor (#72 as tagged on his wings — he was that close) came swooping over our heads looking for his breakfast.  It was wonderful, and I whipped out the camera and captured this picture as he circled overhead.  The size of this bird was amazing…as Andrew points out, just think that one wing is about the size …

Take It Easy

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“Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona; What a fine sight to see…” But I get ahead of myself. Sunday was a big travel day on our western trip, but we did manage to see some great historic sites and landscapes, eat a couple of nice meals, and recall a part of our youth. Sunday morning we left the first of three hotels with a great history that we visited that day.  El Rancho in Gallup, New Mexico bills itself as the “Home of the Movie Stars” – as long as you mean movie stars of the 1930s-1950s.  We stayed in the Spencer Tracy Room and had fun walking through this funky western-style lobby (see photo below) looking at pictures of Errol Flynn, an early Fred McMurray, Katherine Hepburn, and the like.  We left El Rancho and found a great local breakfast diner in Gallup – called My Sister’s Place – that reminded us of the Beverly Restaurant in Staunton and the City Cafe in Murfreesboro (two of our favorite family breakfast restaurants).  Suitably fortified …