A hike, then Mexican

Becky and I had a great weekend. We kinda did our Valentines Day "festivities" a little early, since I will be 2 hours away on the actual day and this coming weekend she works Sat and Sun. bummer!!

We got up on Saturday morning nice a late and made what, I have to say, must have been just about the world's best omelet for breakfast. We lounged around for a while and then decided to go for a hike to burn of the muchas calorias that we planned to eat that night at Casa Bonita, a fantastic local Mexican restaurant. If you want good Mexican food, come to the Southwest!

We consulted our handy Flagstaff Trail Map and decided on Inner Basin Trail. A not-so-inspiring name for what turned out to be a beautiful trail. To get to the trail head you have to drive about 8 miles on this twisty-turny forest service road that wraps around a large cinder cone volcano called Sugarload Peak. The trailhead is located in Lockett Meadow, a beautiful, open meadow lined with aspen trees with views of several of the major peaks north of Flagstaff. Unfortunately, we got about 3 miles from the trailhead and came to a locked gate. So parked our car and decided to walk up at least to Lockett Meadow. So in most of the pictures below you will see the forest service road we hiked on rather than the trail.

Lockett Meadow at the trailhead with the San Francisco Peaks behind.

Becky in Lockett Meadow

Dustin in Lockett Meadow

Becky on a water break

Cinder cone volcano field

Grand Canyon can be seen as the little dip in the horizon.

Sunset Crater (a 5000 year old cinder cone volcano)

The Painted Desert on the horizon

Coming back down the trail afforded us with some of the best views on the hike. We could see several of the bigger attractions near Flagstaff, like Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and Sunset Crater. That night we hit up Casa Bonita for some much needed enchilada calories.