Flagstaff Base Camp

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Flagstaff Base

March 31st and snow is falling in Flagstaff, which is unfortunate as we must come down from the Mountain to Phoenix and pick up Stacey, Joe and the boys tomorrow, yuk! We were late, but made it and all of us are settled in, cold but looking forward to a week of sharing some wonderful sight seeing experiences. The KOA is a beautiful campground in the pines and will make a great base camp for our travels.

On April 2nd, we are off in our rented SUV (even a small RV, like our 30’ Georgie Boy would be a burden on some of these mountain roads). Our first day out the road leads us to Sedona down scenic 89A from Flagstaff. It is a most beautiful ride through Oak Creek Canyon and Sliding Rock State Park to Sedona and Red Rock State Park. We are looking at immense and strangely shaped red sandstone cliffs and rivers winding through them the entire way. Joey wants a fishing rod. The strange shapes are created by the constant erosion of the soft sedimentary sandstone. The shapes and colors are so unique that Hollywood has made many western movies in Sedona; a small town with a main street full of unique shops and galleries. Spiritualists consider Sedona a place of natural positive energy as it contains many “vortexes” - fields that give off three types of energy from the earth; electrical, magnetic and electromagnetic. These are considered to be masculine, feminine and neutral, respectively. Therefore, the town itself is full of new age shops and has spiritual tours. No, we didn’t take a spirit tour; the scenery was enough to spiritualize all of us! The history of Sedona makes interesting reading however.

We continued to Tuzigoot National Monument, which houses the ruins of a pueblo occupied by the Sinagua Indians about 1000 A.D. and abandoned for unknown reasons around 1425. Many interesting theories are presented for the move, the most reasonable, I think, is that the population left to join the larger Hopi community to the North; kind of a spiritual quest. There were more than 100 rooms from which archeologists have recovered tools, cloth, jewelry and pottery. There were petroglyphs carved in the stones. The road then led us through the town of Jerome - oh my - right on top of a mountain. I am so glad we are not driving the RV. Jerome is a very interesting town where copper mines were began in earnest around 1886. It became a thriving city of over 15,000 until the copper ran out and now has been revived with unique shops, galleries and museums.

On Saturday we all loaded up in the SUV again for a trip down nostalgic Route 66 to the Grand Canyon Caverns, which were a blast. We were treated to the strange story of the discovery of the caverns before the creaky elevator took us down 100 feet to the start of the tour. Skeletons, rock formations, a giant 2000 lb sloth unfortunate enough to have fallen in, and poor Bob the Bobcat (another fall victim) abounded. On our return we stopped at the famous Galaxy Diner on Route 66 for chocolate malts and root beer floats. This was one of my favorite stops - see photos!

Sunday, April 4th, we are off in the other direction, east on 40, to Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest. I can’t believe the amount of road we covered today. Joe was driving and he is just a little bit quicker than Paul. Well, maybe a lot quicker. Meteor Crater was as impressive as expected and while I expected 100 foot petrified trees in the forest, I was not disappointed in the hundreds of huge stumps and logs that have been uncovered by erosion that is still going on. They are beautiful and traveling back to route 40 through the Painted Desert was a revelation on how many colors can appear in rocks.

Very tired and not at all hesitant to climb into bed this evening!

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Photos

Oh No Snow
Snow beginning in Flagstaff, March 31st

How red is this rock?
Close up of Sedona sandstone

Galaxy Diner
This is the famous Galaxy Diner on Route 66 in Flagstaff Arizona.

Stacey, Joey and Connor
Sedona