Road Trip day 11

Driving from Page, AZ to Williams, AZ.
We left Page early in the morning to be able to visit Horse Shoe Bend. This is just a place you want to visit when you're ever in the area. It's a kind of an optical illusion, because it looks like the Colorado River just makes a circle with an island in the middle. There a small trail you have to walk to get there and with summer temperatures you don't want to do this in the middle of the day. Also, depending on the sunrise, you might get a lot of shadow in your picture if you're there late in the afternoon.
We took several pictures, and some great ones too. Still I chose another picture for today, because mine won't be really different from the ones you can find online.

We headed to Flagstaff and on our way we stopped at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and had a picnic lunch. About 900 years ago a volcano erupted and therefore the landscaping looks kind of weird. You can see the lava flow and plants and trees will just grow out of the lava. I did tell you it looks weird, did I?
After the picnic lunch we drove to the bordering Wupatki National Monument. The boys wanted to work on another Junior Rangers booklet to earn another badge. The landscape was really beautiful and at some times still weird with the almost black lava and trees growing in the holes and cracks of the lava.
After some sightseeing we drove back to Sunset Crater and walked a short trail. We took a lot of pictures. Then we went back to the visitors center and on our way there we saw a little bear cub crossing the street. Our first wild bear! We where too impressed to take a picture. At least I was.
The ranger at the visitors center told us there is a bear in the park who got 3 cubs a couple of months ago. She's looking after and feeding 2 of them, but we probably saw the 3rd one that's kind of on his own for his survival.

We drove to Flagstaff to visit Lowell Observatory and take some more pictures, but I think I owe you a picture of the weird landscaping of Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, so here it is.