A Beautiful Hotel and a Cliff Dwelling

"Well, I'm standing on a corner 

in Winslow, Arizona

and such a fine sight to see . . ." 

We were originally thinking of doing some rock climbing in Jack's Canyon, which led us to look at what was in Winslow, Arizona. Remember the line from the Eagles song Take It Easy?

We weren't keen on hanging around waiting for everything to dry after a couple nights and a day of heavy rain so at the last minute decided to start making our way back to Moab. But Andrew seems to be really good at finding unique places for us to stay and Winslow has a beautiful old hotel that has mostly been restored (some areas are still being worked on).

La Posada Hotel was designed by the famous architect, Mary Jane Colter. (If you've been to the Grand Canyon, you've probably seen some of her smaller building designs.) La Posada has a very interesting history connected to the Santa Fe Railway and was almost victim to the wrecking ball several times over the years before being purchased for the purpose of restoration in 1997.

Mary Jane Colter was not just the architect of the building itself but also designed the gardens
and many other features of the hotel. 

Looking at the map as we headed north from Winslow, we saw Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de-shay.) Having never heard of it before, we decided to at least stop at the visitor's centre and take a scenic drive. We got fabulous views along the south rim of the Canyon but it would have been nice to have taken the time to hike down to see some of the ruins and cliff dwellings a bit closer.

White House ruins can be seen near the centre of the photo.

A closer view of the White House ruins. At it's peak it housed 100 people in about 60 rooms.

Looking down the Canyon in the opposite direction from the ruins.