Arizona, February-March 2016
Denise and I begin in Phoenix but quickly head to the high desert and its magnificent natural history.
Click on the map above to see a larger version. (Google Maps)
We began by driving to Phoenix to attend an 80th birthday party. Having visited family, we explored some of the sites around Phoenix, including Taliesen West and Casa Grande National Monument, and then began our driving tour of the high desert and red rock country of Northern Arizona. See the map to the left to follow our route in North-East Arizona.
We headed first for Sedona for some good food and shopping, but were so put off by the aggressive and noisy construction there that we moved on to Flagstaff after one night. Sedona has sold its soul to growth like most cities, and in fact, there are plans to build a nuclear power plant there. What happened to the New Age City we once knew? Flagstaff was more to our taste, and while there we visited the Lowell Observatory, famous for its discovery of Pluto in 1930. From Flagstaff we also visited the Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments to the north off state highways 89 and 395.
We then headed east on Interstate 40 to Chambers, visiting the Barringer Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert along the way. Chambers was just a place to stop for the night before heading north to Kayenta and Navajo country, stopping to visit the historic Hubbell Trading Post near Ganado and the magnificent Canyon de Chelly outside Chinle.
We stayed four nights in Kayenta to use it as a base to visit the picturesque Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and Mesa Verde National Park. From Kayenta we headed west and drove to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, where we stayed at the Yavapai Lodge for a couple of nights. Our timing was impeccable in that we arrived just as spring break began for Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon National Park began to fill up with students looking for some relief from their studies. We've visited the Grand Canyon in considerably more crowded conditions during the spring and summer, so we had a good time nonetheless and enjoyed some crisp weather taking in the sights.
Click on the map above to see a larger version. (Google Maps)
Finally we began the long drive home. See map to the left.
First stop was the Hoover Dam, a magnificient piece of Depression Era engineering and spent the night in Henderson NV just outside of Las Vegas. We wanted to take a scenic route home rather than return as we had started the trip, i.e. through Southern California and the Central Valley of California. So we headed due west hoping we would find an open pass in the Sierra Nevada.
First step was to drive through Death Valley east to west, something we hadn't done before, to Lone Pine in the Owens Valley where we spent the night. We got a bit of rain in Death Valley and drove through some snow flurries as we headed over the several passes in the "Basin and Range" terrain before descending into Owens Valley. We woke up the next morning to the magnificent sight of the snow-covered Sierra Nevada Mountains and Mt. Whitney to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the East. To our delight, California Highway 88 over Carson Pass was open and the weather was clear. Therefore, on the final leg of our adventure, we drove up Interstate 395, through the Long Valley Caldera, past Mammoth Mountain, past Mono Lake and finally over Carson Pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just south of Lake Tahoe. In Carson Pass we again encountered some gentle snow flurries before popping out into the Central Valley and the final stretch home.
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, about 60 miles south-east of Phoenix: The Casa Grande ruins include the four-story structure covered by a modern roof-structure (1932) to protect it from the elements plus many less-well preserved ruins about it, many of which have not yet been excavated. Casa Grande was believed to have been completed about 1350 BCE, though its builders, the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert, were living in permanent settlements as early as 300 BCE.
Taliesin West, Scottsdale: Taliesin West was Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, studio, and architecture school. He and his wife spent their winters there from 1937 until his death in 1959; they spent the rest of the year in Taliesin, located in southern Wisconsin near where Wright grew up. Taliesin West was designed according to Wright's principles of making the architecture fit the landscape and using local materials.
Biltmore Hotel, Phoenix: After our tour of Taliesen West, we had lunch at the Biltmore Hotel in central Phoenix. It was designed by Albert Chase McArthur, who had studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, and was completed in 1929. Wright briefly consulted on the design, but contrary to myth was not the primary designer.
Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix: This 200,000 square foot museum was opened in 2010. It claims to be the largest museum dedicated to musical instruments in the world. We had only a few hours to explore its exhibits of musical instruments, from the most primitive to the modern, from almost every country in the world and we ran out of time. Next time around we will dedicate a full day to it.
Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon: We stayed one night in Sedona on our way to the high desert and the Colorado Plateau. We were horribly disappointed by the growth of Sedona since we were last there, admittedly over 20 years ago. What happened to the new age city and its quirky shops? We were awakened the next morning at 6:45am by a pile driver at a new condomium complex across the street from our hotel. We got out of town as soon as we had breakfast and took our money with us.
Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff AZ: The Lowell Observatory is most famous for the discovery of the planet Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. It is located on a hill, dubbed Mars Hill due to Lowell's obsession with Mars, at the edge of town perhaps a 10 minute drive from our hotel, so we had to check it out and take the tour. It was established in 1894 by Percival Lowell, a serious amateur astronomer from a wealthy family, who paid for the observatory's construction. The original telescope, an Alvan Clark & Sons, 24-inch refractor and the 13-inch refractor used to discover Pluto are open for tours and various educational programs. We went to the evening program which was very well done; we got to look through the Clark telescope.
Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument: Sunset Crater is located about 20 miles north of Flagstaff and is the youngest of the 600 volcanoes in the San Francisco Volcanic Field. It last erupted about 1085 AD and is considered dormant. Its name comes from the bright red-brown color of its crater rim that best seen in the light of dawn and dusk.
Wupatki National Monument is perhaps 40 miles north-east of Flagstaff off Road 395. The complex is the work of an Ancient Pueblo People, the Sinagua, which means "without water" in Spanish. It comprises a multistory dwelling of over 100 rooms, a community room, a kiva and a ball court. The site was occupied from around 500 to 1225 AD. An estimated 100 people lived here at its peak.
Barringer Meteor Crater: Located about 37 miles east of Flagstaff, this is amongst the best preserved meteorite impact sites on Earth due to the dry climate of the Colorado Plateau and the resulting slow erosion of the site. It measures 0.74 miles across and 560 feet deep. The crater was created about 50,000 years ago by a nickel-iron meteorite estimated to have been 160 feet across and traveling at 28,600 mph on impact. Most of the meteor was vaporized traveling through the atmosphere and on impact. The crater is owned by the Barringer family and is designated a National Natural Landmark.
Petrified Forest National Park & Painted Desert is known for the fossilized trees and other fossils of the Late Triassic, about 225 million years ago, that are found in the so-called colorful Chinle Formation from which the Painted Desert gets its name. Fossils of ferns, ginkgoes and other plants, and fauna such as large amphibians and early dinosaurs can also be found here.
Canyon de Chelly National Monument is a series of branching canyons, spreading out from west to east: Canyon de Chelly, Monument Canyon, Black Rock Canyon, and Canyon del Muerto, cut by streams that frow from the Chuska Mountains in the east through the canyons and out of the entrance to the west. The national monument is completely within the Navajo Nation, but is co-administered with the federal governement.
There are two main ways to see the park: hire a guide to drive you through the canyons, which we did over twenty years ago, or drive the rim roads (north and south) and look into the valley from the overlooks. We did the latter this time because we were on our way to Kayenta and were a bit pressed for time. We took the South Rim Drive that offers better lighting in the afternoon.
Mesa Verde National Park: This was a comfortable day-drive from Kayenta, but unfortunately winter is not the best time to visit Mesa Verde since much of the park is closed. Only the Chapin Mesa drive leading to the Cliff Palace and Mesa Top Loops were open to traffic, and no cliff dwelling was open to exploration on foot. The Spruce Tree House immediately behind the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum, normally kept open in the winter, was closed due a rock fall. So our exploration was constrained to what we could see from the overlooks. Nonetheless, we had a nice visit.
Mesa Verde National Park is well know for the large number of cliff dwellings built by the "Ancestral Puebloan culture", including the cliff dwellings of Canyon de Chelly, during the 11th century and subsequently abandoned around 1285. There are almost 600 cliff dwellings within the park boundries.
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is located on the Arizona-Utah state line on the Colorado Plateau and is famous for its spectacular red-rock buttes and mesas, the tallest reaching approximately 1,000 feet in height, that have appeared in numerous western movies and television programs. This was also a comfortable day-drive from Kayenta. The park is located within the Navajo Nation and is co-administered with the National Park Service. We took a guided tour of the valley with a Navajo guide that took us beyond the 17-mile self-guided route.
Grand Canyon National Park - South Rim: The Grand Canyon is superlative by its nature due to its size and beauty. It is also, unfortunately, crowded year round, with tour buses coming and going and the best vistas crowded with both real and would be photographers and a lot of crazy people who want to simply sit and dangle their feet over the edge. But it is a must see.
We spent two nights in the Yavapai Lodge, and after driving in from the east, we spent the rest of the time walking to and from the interesting sites. Of special note is Mather Point and the Geology Museum. We left from the entrance on the south-west to begin our drive home.
Hoover Dam: From the Grand Canyon we drove to Hoover Dam that straddles the Colorado River and is bisected by the Nevada-Arizona border just off Interstate 93 and took a tour. The dam was built between 1931 and 1936, during the height of the Great Depression, putting thousands of men to work, unfortunately at the cost of 112 lives. The building of the dam created Lake Meade. Besides flood control, the turbines in the dam create considerable electrical power for Nevada, Arizona and Southern California. Interstate 93 used to cross the dam, but was relocated with a bypass in 2010.
The Drive Home (Death Valley, Owens Valley, the Long Valley Caldera, Mono Lake, and Carson Pass): After a night in Henderson NV, we drove to Lone Pine in the center of the Owens Valley via Death Valley, and from there we drove home over Carsen Pass. We saw only a few wild flowers in Death Valley; we missed the amazing bloom of just a few weeks before, but the scenery was still spectacular, and it was raining lightly, a rare thing. The sky was overcast as we drove into Owens Valley and it appeared to be raining or snowing over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east. The next morning the sky was clear and the mountains on both sides of Owens Valley were covered in snow, a spectacular sight. After breakfast, we headed off on the final leg of our journey by driving north up Interstate 395 through the Long Valley Caldera, past Mammoth Mountain, through the Mono Lake Basin, and finally over Carson Pass into the Central Valley and home. We had a dusting of snow as we drove through Carson Pass, which had already received considerable snow during the winter, making for a beautiful end to our adventure. 2,800 miles in 19 days.
