One of my favorite things to do before traveling is to do extensive research about where we are going. I do this for a few reasons, but the most important reasons is traveling with kids can be exhausting. If I’m not sure what we are doing, the kids become restless and we end up having a disaster on our hands. For this trip, we were trying to hit as many spots as possible (see Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Page, Lower Antelope Canyons and more…). I had researched Arizona prior to arriving so we had a long list of places we wanted to see. We decided to fly out on Friday night to give us the best chance of starting Saturday morning fresh. We thought the kids would sleep on the five hour flight, we would take a nap and BOOM, we’d land adjusted to the time change by falling asleep Friday night and then waking up Saturday morning ready to take on the day. That did not happen…best laid plans.
For this leg of our trip, we stayed in Flagstaff as our home base. We wanted to see Flagstaff and knew that Painted Desert and Petrified Forest were close to Flagstaff and we also knew we could hit Meteor Crater Park too. We stayed at Days Inn in Flagstaff and I will say that we were very happy with our stay at Days Inn East. I tried to pick hotels that had a free breakfast area just to keep down costs. My boys were OVER THE MOON when they saw the indoor pool at this hotel and met quite a few kids to swim with at the hotel. We paid about $80.00 a night which included breakfast and a nice pool to swim in, so we were happy. The boys were able to find something they liked in the breakfast area and each day there were eggs, bagels, pastries, cereal, hot chocolate, milk, etc available. We never walked away hungry! Here is our pickiest kid finding something he liked on the buffet:
When you take the exit for Meteor Crater Park, be prepared for a LONG drive down a LONG road. There are signs which tell you to watch out for cows. We didn’t see any, but our boys had their fingers crossed! The long road:
Once you reach the location, you drive right in, parking is right near the entrance. We paid $18.00 per adult and $9.00 per child. But once inside, you get to see really cool things in the museum area. There is a short film to watch and they even have guided tours around the rim. Plus the kids get to touch a meteorite which they were so excited to do:
We didn’t do this because we were short on time. Here are some photos from the crater:
