The Ray Adventures: Heading North

Fri. 4/25
We had an interesting drive from Mesa to Fort Tuthill which is about 5 miles south of Flagstaff. The landscape was changing, we left the cactus behind for rocks. We stopped at Montezuma Castle, 50 miles south of Flagstaff. Sinagua farmers built this 5-story 20 room dwelling between 1100 and 1300 A.D. It occupies a cliff recess 100 feet above the valley. We'd called from the freeway to see if they had RV parking. The gal that answered the phone said there was an area for tour buses and we shouldn't have any trouble. We drove into the parking lot, very tight corners and the oversize parking area was taken up. So we had to drive back to the casino parking lot nearby, disconnect then drive in. Of course when we got back there was room for the coach. We got to Ft. Tuthill, the FamCamp for Luke AFB in Phoenix. It's more of a recreation area, in a forest of Ponderosa Pine. We had to rough it, we didn't have satellite (or any) TV, no sewer connection, no 50 amp service to run our electric heat. Life is hard.

Saturday 4/26 We woke up to snow and it snowed on and off all day with an accumulation of about 5 inches total. I didn't leave the coach all day.

Sunday 4/27 A much better day, sunshine blue sky. Most of the snow was gone but it was still windy. Flagstaff is 7000 feet elevation, the Francisco Mtns. over 12,000 feet are the highest elevation in Arizona. We drove into Flagstaff to the visitor center to plan our stay in the area. After picking up some geo caches we had lunch at Lumberyard Brew Pub, good food and Gary liked the beer. The railroad runs though town, they say as many as 125 trains pass through town everyday. The trains do not blow their horn, there are train signal arms but still it's scary, they don't slow down.

Monday 4/28, the nicest day yet. We visited the Roirdan Museum, two brothers owned the lumber mill in town and married two sisters. They built the 13,000 sq ft home, 6000 feet on each side with a 1000 sq ft "rendezvous" room between the two. A famous architect from Chicago designed the home finishing the building in 1904. The architect also designed the El Tovar Lodge in the Grand Canyon. The mill, in the world's largest Ponderosa Pine forest was quite successful, they had over 600 employees. After lunch at Flagstaff Brewing company we picked up Luci and headed for Sedona just 23 miles south. We drove through the Oak Creek Canyon, a winding narrow road to Slide Rock State Park. Originally was a homestead dating to the 1920's, became an apple orchard then became a state park. The creek narrows down to make a natural water slide. While we were there, a school bus full of kids around age 10 were on a field trip to the park. The water temperature was 50 degrees, most of the comments we heard were "IT'S COLD" Some of the kids didn't go all the 70 feet down to the pool, others went back for more. It looked like fun, maybe in the middle of summer I'll try the slide. We took Luci for a walk further up the creek, what a beautiful area. After we left the park we drove into Sedona to see all the gorgeous red rock formations. We had a busy day, after dinner in the coach we left for Lowell Observatory about 7:00pm. Just a couple of miles up a hill from the city center the elevation was about 7250 feet. A beautiful clear cold night. When we visited Kitt Peak Observatory we were inside. The viewing at Lowell was outside, we both underdressed, nearly froze to death. They had three telescopes set up outside, we saw Saturn and it's rings, Mars and the Beehive cluster, it just looked fuzzy to me. First we saw a film about the Discovery Channel Telescope that the Observatory partnered with to build a 4.3 meter telescope on Happy Jack Mountain some 40 miles south of Flagstaff. The original telescope at Lowell built in 1894, was a 24 inch that cost a whopping $20,000. In 1930 the astronomers at Lowell discovered Pluto. The new DCT telescope cost 53 million dollars, the mirror was built in Massachusetts and trucked across the country. It first went to U of A to be "cleaned" a process that had to be absolutely perfect. A secondary mirror was made in California, also having to be perfect, a mistake was made and they had to start all over. In the end it took 8 years to complete the mirror, the brace and the building holding the telescope.

Tuesday, April 29 we left Ft. Tuthill and Flagstaff in a NE wind that was strong and very cold. It was a beautiful drive, the landscape changing constantly. We were on our way to Page, Az, close to the Utah border and Glen Canyon National Recreation area, Lake Powell 186 miles long backs up from the Glen Canyon Dam. We were following both the map and GPS on our drive into Page. About 45 miles south we saw a road sign for Page directing us to the right over a gravel road. So on up the road we went 40 miles and came to a screeching halt at a road closed sign, we quickly made the turn to the left towards the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Now what! We ended up calling the RV park, they told us a landslide closed that road about 12 miles south of town about a year previous. We had to back track the 40 miles, make the turn to the right then drive another 35 into town. There were no (obvious) detour signs that we saw. They had even paved the gravel road it had been that long. The town of Page was built in 1957 for the construction of the dam, the land was owned by the Navajo's, they traded the land to the city. There are some 2,000 miles of shoreline which makes is houseboat heaven, we did see a few in the water but it was early yet for the tourism season. After dinner we drove to an overlook of the lake, dam and beautiful red cliffs. It wasn't an "awesome" sunset but watching the cliffs change color as the sun was setting was glorious.

Wed. April 30 we drove just a short ways to Horseshoe Bend one of the highlights of our visit to Page. As you will see from the fabulous picture Gary took it looks like a horseshoe. The walk was only 1 1/2 miles round trip BUT the first third was a loose sand steep hill, sand downhill for another third then uneven rock. As clumsy as I am I'm surprised I didn't fall off the cliff. Gary was brave leaning over the edge to snap the photo, there are no railings to lean on. Of course the walk was reversed with loose sand going back up. Good aerobic exercise. After lunch at the Dam Bar and Grill we went down to the Glen Canyon Dam overlook. Again, another steep hill to maneuver. There were signs stating it was against the law to deface any rocks. Well, two "old enough to know better" women were scratching something into the rocks right in front of the covered lookout. Gary took a picture of them so we "ratted" them out, they left at the same time we did so we took their license number and went off to the ranger station. They were very glad to get the information. Later in the afternoon we went geo cacheing near our RV park, we'd picked up two and were heading out behind the soccer fields for another. Luci loves sticks and was very pleased to find one until it coiled up and hissed at her. Gary thinks it was a gopher snake. Another couple were in the area of the geo cache we were after, it's always fun to run into fellow gc'ers but doesn't happen often. They were from the Phoenix area, had been gc'ing for 19 years and had over 46,000 finds. We've done it off and on for 8 years and only have a little over 1,900. We have some catching up to do.

I'm going to break this up into two blogs so they won't be so lengthy.

Enjoy the pic's

Gary and Pam

Montezuma's Castle