Arizona

After that tasty steak and eggs it was time to do the work to get from here to Prescott.  First off I drive across the brand new bridge I walked across last night. The big sign says Arizona is in the Mountain Time Zone.  I checked my phone, confidently expecting it to know the new time.  It did not!  I was quite confused till I remembered that Arizona chooses not to have Daylight Savings Time in the summer.  This is one of the few things I agree with Arizona about!  Anyway, we in Nevada had to “spring forward” a month or so ago, which put us on the same time as Arizona always is, since one must move forward an hour when going west to east – confused?

The drive to Prescott was just as mind-numbing as I feared, about 220 miles of uninterupted driving.  Not my ideal road trip day.  But really, there Is nothing of interest between Hoover Dam and Kingman then Kingman to Prescott, so if you want to get to Prescott you gotta do the boring drive.

Prescott in a place I could see myself living.  If I ever do sell my condo and become more or less rootless, it is one of the places I think I will spend time.  This afternoon I went straight through town to White Spar, a Forest Service Campground a mere three miles south of town.  I fussed around for a while deciding which was the perfect campsite, then took a nice nap. Returned to town later to spend an hour or so at the delightful Prescott Library, and have a great conversation with Martha about all the exciting things in her life.

Wednesday (May 22)

Slept very well.  The pine forests around here are very pretty and restful. There were a couple of extremely cute little woodpeckers, black and white with a red top.  There was a stiff wind, the tall skinny lodgepole pines were swaying, and that sweet pine tree smell was in the air! It was hard to leave.

Had a cinnamon bun and wifi at a cozy bakery in Prescott.  There were three or four different hip-happenin’ coffee places to choose from in downtown.  Yep, Prescott is my kind of town.

Today I take the route I was snowed out of taking in 2010.  Along winding old Alternate Route 89 up and over the Mingus Mountains to the town of Jerome, clinging to the east side of the mountains.   An old mining town that’s become a popular tourist destination … and why not?  It’s a cool place, and from anywhere in town you have a specacular of the big wide valley below, backlit by the afternoon sun.

Then I pass Cottonwood, thinking of Ben and his new life here.  Too bad today he is back in Payson, finishing up at his old job, so we will not connect.  ahh timing…

Next stop Sedona.  My coffee house was so otherworldly that I was moved to rant on Facebook:

well, here I am at Heart of Sedona coffee house. This town is without a doubt the most thoroughly new-agey place I’ve ever been. It’s like this whole small city is Harbin Hot Springs. I think I would have to search to find food WITH gluten. Too many over-privileged seekers and the folks who follow them are a little annoying… mighty purty though…

The coffee house had two different entries in Yelp (ranked 1 and 3!).  I asked the hottie barista about it, and it turns out those were previous ownerships, and now it has yet a third name.  Nothing is constant except change in New Agey land!

Oak Creek canyon was not as sweet as I remembered. I think it’s become too popular.  It’s quite narrow and crowded, and not at all user-friendly as I remembered it from the 80’s.  The first campground, Manzanita, is the most desireable, it has only 11 spots and it was full.  The other two are close to each other a good ways further up the road.  I try the first of the two – Cave Springs.  It turns out to be big and tightly run – gatekeepers etc.  If I had it to do over I’d go another 1/4 to Pine Flats.  But I did all right – the gatekeeper dude hooked me up with a primo spot that was reserved for the rest of the weekend, but the reservation didn’t start till tomorrow.  Site A-11, right on Oak Creek.  So I had a quality experience there.

I arrived relatively early in the day. I had stressed a little all day about getting any kind of site in Oak Canyon. I ate and fiddled around til a little before dark then started on the trail across the road that goes more or less straight up the side of the canyon.  I went a mile or so, to a very dramatic rock outcrop looking up the canyon.  Picked up the almost-full moon on the way down, pretty cool!  I note that there are actual oaks in Oak Canyon, lots of them!  Don’t see many oaks in Reno or the Eastern Sierras. The canyon is narrow and very full of people and very dry oak trees. A forest fire in high wind would be f–ing scary here.

Thursday

Oak Creek is pretty nice in the morning, the songbirds are singing, the woodpeckers are pecking, the stream is burbling, and … the roar of the Harleys on the busy road is echoing off the sides of the canyon. … sigh.

On the way on up the canyon I do a drive-thru on the remaining campground, Pine Flats, which as noted above looks like more my kind of place.  Next stop at the canyon overlook, then on to Flagstaff.

I yelped for coffee.  One of the top places had good bisquits and gravy in their reviews, so I set my sights on it.  It was pretty good – more like soup than gravy, but quite tasty and hippy-healthy and the biscuit was really nicely done.  Didn’t really enjoy the place itself very much though, too lunch-time crowded and noisy.  Their wifi died on me before I could finish the little work project I was doing.  So I went directly to the Flagstaff Public Library.  Boy, I love going to the libraries of the towns I visit!

I know this is the last civilization I’ll see til southern Colorado in a couple of days, so I am strangly moved to stop at a McD’s looming on my side of the highway on the northeast edge of Flagstaff – fish sando and a hot fudge sundae … and that fine McD’s wifi! (irony alert)  That fortified me for the 140 miles of driving to get  to my campground.

My camping app shows one lonely federal campground a few miles off of US 160 in the Navajo Reservation(*). It turns out to be in the Navaho National Monument. I now know that this monument protects some cool old cliff dwellings (possibly the ancestral home of the Hopis before moving to New Mexico). It has been here a while, but it seems that in the last decade or so it’s been upgraded with a nice Visitors Center and a sweet little campground. It’s small, the sites have great vista views across the slickrock wilderness, and the bathroom has running water!

(*) while the State of Arizona does not recognize Daylight Savings Time, the Navajo Nation does! My clever iPhone, once it got enough bars to figure out where it was, jumped back and forth an hour according to whether or not we (my phone and I) were in the reservation!

I celebrated the nearly full moon by having my second night of a 2-3 mile hike that has a sunset in the middle and ends in the moonlight. There was a little excitement on this one, I came to a gate in the access road at the end of the trail and got confused about which side led back to civilization and which went to nowhere. Lucky for me I was so turned around that I stumbled back onto my original trail and had enough sense to recognize it!

Friday

It was a very pleasant, nearly perfect sleeping night (a little windy). The camper next to me just rolled her bedroll out on the slickrock and seemed to have enjoyed it a lot.

It’s all downhill out of the park to US 160. A place in Kayenta called the Blue Mug is the only place that Yelp says has coffee for the next 80 miles. Too late for breakfast, so I got a Navajo-ish lunch (mutton and Navajo bread). The meal was actually pretty good, but the undercurrent of hostility I got from basically everybody there was kind of a downer. I took the 40 mile longer route to drive through Monument Valley – crazy beautiful but not very user-friendly. Unless you set aside a couple of days to head out on horses or jeeps, all you really can do with it is drive through and say “wow” … which I was happy to do!

Where US 163 (scenic offshoot of 160) crosses the swift and muddy San Juan River is the little hamlet of Mexican Hat. There is a place there – the Mexican Hat Lodge – that is a treasured place to me. I stayed there with my Mom in the 70’s and my ex in the 80’s, maybe even by myself in the 90’s. The bridge crosses the river and takes an immediate zig downriver, while upriver is a store, restaurant, lodge and cabins that hug the canyon for about 300 yards. I think it’s as cool a place as I’ve ever been.  I stopped to soak in memories for a few minutes then headed on down the road.

After Bluff UT, the scenery got gradually less awesome and more prosaic, till eventually I was in the southwest corner of Colorado which is pretty much generic dusty ole cow country.