Day 7

On the 7th day of our journey it was slightly a rough day. We had to check out of the Rodeway at 11 am but our train didn’t leave until 10pm. Luckily the Flagstaff Amtrak station allows people to leave their luggage for a fee. We had three bags each and it was $4 a bag, but the nice man behind the counter suggested we check a couple bags because that was free so we ended up checking 2 bags and saving $8.

Flagstaff is a really small town when you have 11 hours to kill. We went through all the buildings in the historic downtown and were done looking by 3. My boyfriend even got a haircut to kill about a half hour of time. One good thing about Flagstaff though is their happy hour. Almost every bar has a happy hour with extremely cheap drinks that range from around 3pm up to 9pm. We went to some small bar on the corner where we got $4 long island ice teas, $4 cocktail drinks and $3 draft beers. We stayed there for about an hour but I definitely now wish we stayed longer to kill even more time.

After we finished the bar we walked across the tracks to a place called Aspen Place. Looking online it seemed like this was going to be a cool shopping area like sort of outlets, however once we got there, there were only about 6 or so stores and they were all expensive, nothing very fun.

From there it was around 5pm or so and we decided to go up to the Lowell Observatory. We were thinking it would be cool to go up there at night and possibly see some stars. It said it was only a 45-minute walk from where we currently were which after walking all day didn’t seem too bad. However once we were about 20 minutes away we realized that the area was pitch black and all the way straight up a giant hill. It was probably below 30 degrees and I ended up having to walk in my tank top because I was dying of heat from the terrible walk. I absolutely recommend that anyone who visits the observatory either take a car, taxi or the public Mountain Line busses because that walk was treacherous.

Once we walked for 20 minutes up hill we got to the observatory and the main desk guy said it was a bad night for viewing because of clouds. Honestly I was about to punch him because I hadn’t walked up the entire hill just to have to turn around. Luckily though there were several presentations throughout the night that we could enjoy if we wanted so we decided to pay the $11 entry fee and just see the presentations.

The first one we saw was about constellations. We kinda walked into that one after it already started but it was still pretty interesting. Then at 7pm there was another one about a tour of our solar system. There ended up being only a couple people viewing this one but I thought it was super interesting. That one ended at 745 and the presenter suggested we view the next one in the big building about the Pluto flyby that just occurred. We thought that would be interesting so we looked around the exhibits and waiting until 8pm.

I have to agree with all the recommendations on this presentation because it was awesome. We were thinking that it was only going to be a 45-minute presentation like the rest but the guy said he usually went an hour and 10 minutes. If we wanted to walk back we would have to leave pretty early into the presentation but it was so interesting that we didn’t want to leave so we ended up calling a taxi and getting back to the station around 9:30, perfect timing. Honestly I was extremely happy about taking the taxi back because I was already freezing and had no desire walking all the way down the hill in the dark and through town to the train station. But it was definitely worth going up to the observatory because of that last presentation which was incredible.

The train was exactly on time when we got to the station and prepared for another rough night of sleep on the train until we got to Los Angeles at 8:15 the next morning. Honestly I was super excited for California because it had been almost like a dream destination my entire childhood.

 

*An update, we believe that someone from the Rodeway Inn stole all the change in my boyfriend’s duffle bag, because as soon as we got to California we realized it was missing and the only time it was out of his sight was when it was in the hotel room and we were gone.  It is possible they also stole my old Nintendo DS because I noticed that went missing too, but I may have left that on the train, but they definitely stole his change so DO NOT stay there, find some place else.