Arizona Vacation Log of Sue and Joe
Our road trip to north-central Arizona began on Thursday, September 21, 2017, with a stop in Springfield, MO, where we visited Jack and his children. He welcomed us to his comfortable home, which of course includes a remarkable 'wall of butterflies'. He showed us the log cabin he was building on the floodplain behind his house. When finished it would serve as a play cabin for Jacque and Jackson, along with the nearby tree house he constructed a few years ago (I see a B&B in the future!). Early the next day, after a hearty 'Jack breakfast' we began the second leg of the trip through Oklahoma and portions of Texas, spending the night in Amarillo, Texas at a Marriott Hotel. Much of the Oklahoma terrain we passed through was similar to the rolling stream-dissected plains of western Kentucky. That evening we had a very tasty artesian pizza at a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel.
The third day we traveled the plains of Texas and New Mexico, where we saw many wind-turbine farms, each large 300-ft high turbine humming in the brisk southern wind. The broad and distant vistas of the semi-arid plains was remarkable for their flatness along with the occasional ridge or mesa. We briefly visited the Painted Desert of Arizona as it was en route, and that evening we arrived at our Windom timeshare property in Flagstaff. Surprisingly, the environment was quite different from the sparse desert vegetation we had just passed through in New Mexico and eastern Arizona. Flagstaff had open forests of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir trees on volcanic cinder cones rising one to two thousand feet. That evening we enjoyed a dinner of fajitas and quesadillas at Salsa Brava, underscored, to Joe's delight by a salsa bar.
On Saturday, after bacon, eggs, toast, and a frosty morning, we explored Sunset Crater National Monument, which is the site of a volcanic eruption about 900 years ago. This event, which was comprised of numerous lava flows and resulting cinder cone growth, displaced numerous Pueblo Indians in the region leaving some artifacts entombed in lava. Several unusual plants had pioneered on the crumpled lava crust and stark cinder piles, in among isolated pine and juniper trees.
On Sunday, our fifth day out, we drove 45 minutes down to Sedona through the remarkable Oak Creek Canyon, with its thousand-foot cliffs. After window shopping in up-town Sedona we ate lunch at an authentic Mexican restaurant enjoying their Tortas. We then explored Red Rock State Park and enjoyed a meandering 1.9 mile hike up to a 200 ft high overlook across meandering the Oak Creek valley. With an elevation of about 5,000 ft, the air was noticeably thinner than we were accustomed to but we kept hydrated in the desert air, though our lips still tended to get dry and cracked.
The sixth day, Monday, we returned to beautiful Sedona and hiked the trail to Devil's Bridge, a natural bridge formed of sandstone. This hike was a 3.8 mile round trip through some remarkable high buttes and mesas. One balancing rock high atop a ridge was amazing as it seemed to defy the laws of gravity. Most of the hike was along a broad eroded jeep trail covered with sand, cobbles, and small boulders; the few passing vehicles had needed clearance of more than a foot. Eventually we branched off onto an eroded trail and worked our way up a steep sandstone hillside, meeting several hikers coming and going. We finally arrived at the steep terminus of the trail where we could view the top of the natural bridge. The span was about 50 ft high, 75 ft wide, with a narrow top about 15 ft wide. It had been formed by an ephemeral hillside wash (runoff stream) that had invaded fractures paralleling the steep hillside, eventually eroding a cavity beneath a former bluff or waterfall ledge (natural bridge type D: underflow cutoff of waterfall). We were able to photograph from above and below the span.
We left Flagstaff on Wednesday (9/27) and while traveling Interstate 40 east diverted, on a whim, to Walnut Canyon National Monument where we climbed down and then up a 235 step staircase (one way about 100 ft) along the wall of the canyon. This site showcased ~thousand-year-old native American dwellings built under limestone overhangs along a 300 ft deep canyon which ringed the core of a stream meander incised deep into the plateau. The former village was quite extensive with many stone walls and room partitions still standing beneath the protecting overhangs. Quite interesting!
As we continued east we passed up Meteor Crater a few miles south of the Interstate 40, mainly because the site remains in private hands and the expensive guided tours were too limited for our tastes. This impact structure is about 4,000 ft wide and 570 ft deep where an 30+ ft-wide iron-nickel meteor struck the plateau about 50,000 years ago. This is probably the best preserved impact crater on Earth but was originally thought to be a volcanic feature until 1963.
We stopped a few miles to the east at Petrified Forest National Park and took a mile-long hike to the site of an ancient log jam on a Triassic-aged river (220 million years old). The numerous logs, up to six ft in diameter and as much as 140 ft long, had been buried by river sediment, where mixed-in silica from volcanic eruptions replaced the wood cells turning them into stone. This was the age when dinosaurs were fairly new and relatively small and their bones are fossilized along with the petrified trees. This was a very interesting location and we could have spent a couple of days here. On our return to the parking lot we saw numerous blue and red police cruiser lights flashing like a huge Christmas display surrounding a helicopter. Our little Prius was nearly surrounded by this frantic activity but they allowed us to move our car to the distant end of the parking lot. At first I thought I had parked in a restricted part of the lot, somehow creating an overblown federal response! Of course it was not about us; apparently, someone had earlier been struck by lightning and was being airlifted to a hospital.
Having passed Winslow, AZ, where we missed seeing a 'girl slowing down in a flatbed Ford', (did, however see a billboard reading 'Standing on the corner'), our next overnight was spent in Holbrook, NM. All went smoothly until at 3:00 am I was awakened by the sharp electronic chirp of a smoke detector with a declining battery. At first I thought it was inside our room but then found it to be just outside our door in the hallway. Sue had not been disturbed by the sound but was awakened by my disruption while investigating the awful noise. After having the night desk person remove the offending life-saving device, the rest of the night's sleep was pretty much shot. One of those little incidents beyond our control.
Our next overnight was in Tucumcari, NM, where we spent an uneventful night looking forward to our last night again with Jack in Springfield. While there we introduced him to Tai food which he seemed to enjoy. Early the next morning we were again treated to an authentic 'Jack Breakfast': pig-bacon, eggs, homemade hash-brown potatoes, and pre-buttered toast. Yum! The perfect start to the trip home to KY.
