As a family our goal is to make it to all 50 states. This year we decided to take on Arizona for spring break! I am terrible about choosing pictures so prepare for a ton! Considering we took hundreds I am quite proud of getting down to the number I did!
As far as flights go, it wasn't terribly long. We did have some drama getting our rental car though. We had "reserved" one with a company but after waiting for 30 minutes, with ten people in front of us and no movement... we ended up having to arrange it with something else. It made us get to our airbnb house late. The lights weren't on, there was a car in the driveway, there was no welcome message inside. It was really creepy and felt like we weren't supposed to be there. It was not a great first experience as far as airbnb goes. However, it was a pretty great location.
The next morning we got up and did the short "moderate" hike up Lookout Mountain. It was a little under a mile to the top but it was up the entire way and exposed in the sun. Considering we went from 50ish degrees at home, two 85 degrees in Phoenix making that climb may not have been our best move. Kayda had some problems with the heat but the view was awesome. It wasn't "beautiful" awesome, to me it's been so developed that any beauty it had is gone. None the less it was cool to see so far around us.
After our hike we got all changed and ready to spend the day at Hurricane Ridge Six Flags water park. Obviously, because it's a water park, we don't have many pictures. Daddy took a break for a little while to snap some though. Our family favorite was the Bahama Blasters. It's basically a water slide roller coaster. You slide down on a tube and really powerful water jets push you up the next and so on. It was really fun and something we've never experienced before. Another favorite was the python which is almost entirely dark with lots of unexpected twists and turns. The park was kind of a disappointing because they had seven of their rides shut down. We stayed the entire time it was open though!
Coming out of the family favorite.
The next day it was time to head up to Flagstaff. We had several stops planned for the trip so it broke up the driving pretty well.
We stopped at one of the rest stops hoping to see some of the many sagauro cacti we had been seeing throughout our drive. Apparently the elevation changed just enough that they no longer grew where the rest stop was. We did find some pretty cool cacti still. The kids were fascinated with the cacti and their thorns. These in particular had needles as long as Carson's fingers.
Our first official stop was Montezuma's well. We skipped the "castle" which is an inaccessible cliff dwelling and went to the well instead. It pumps up 1.5 million gallons of water every day. There isn't enough oxygen in the water for fish and it isn't the best water source because it as trace arsenic in it. They found evidence that over time, using it as their main water source, the tribe had some brain damage from drinking it. Interestingly enough, the specific crops they grew using this water did NOT absorb the arsenic. The well springs up strongly enough that any equipment scientists have placed in it for data collection has been washed up to the surface. There are three structures built into the sides of the cliff surrounding the basin that were used as storage chambers.
I have a thing for stairs anytime we're hiking or adventuring so here's the standard picture!
There is a cave just to the right of this structure. It had incredibly cool air hovering around it and hosts bats, of course.
We saw this sign and thought it was hilarious considering Mormon's are supposed to avoid coffee!
You can see the three structures here, though one is particularly hard to find, it's toward the middle of the picture.
These ditches were created to funnel the water from the basin to the crops.
The outlet of the well.
Our next stop was actually pretty close to the well. We went to the V-bar-v ranch. Here they have petroglyphs around 800 years old. They've been able to interpret some. Grandma G had told me it was set up so the sun would light up certain parts of the calendar depending on the season. Unfortunately a large chunk of the cliff actually broke off and a lot of the petroglyphs were destroyed so that portion was no longer visible.
We finally made it to Flagstaff around dinner time.
We were happily surprised by the fact they had mini-golf, a game room and hot tubs available (the pools weren't open yet). The kids played several rounds of mini golf while we were there.
Back at the condo. It was a really pretty view, though it reminded us of South Dakota a lot.
It kind of became a thing to take silly pictures at our meals.
Tuesday it was time for the main attraction, the Grand Canyon. You hear so many stories about it, people describing it, pictures and videos about it. None of it captures the sheer enormity of it. We spent as much time as we could around the viewpoints. Unfortunately it was cold and very windy. Pebbles were being tossed around in the wind gusts and actually cut Kayda's leg so we didn't last very long.
Mather's point
Kayda was incredibly nervous around the edges of the canyon and always felt much better with the railing between her and the 2000+ ft drop. It was odd because she's never had an issue with heights before.
We decided to head toward desert view watch tower after being told by multiple people that it was well worth the drive. On the way we stopped at the Tusayan ruins. There wasn't a lot to it, which is to be expected since they think only about 30 people lived there. A lot of the buildings were believed to be for storage with several buildings for gatherings.
We also stopped at Navajo Point which is supposed to be the highest elevation view point, according to the maps they pass out. Shortly afterwards we got to the desert watch tower. It was designed to emulate the pueblos the native tribes built in the area.
It was a beautiful building... swarming with people. It was difficult to maneuver because of the crowd but it was worth the visit. It has a great view of the Colorado River. It's amazing to think that a river, that looks so tiny and insignificant from the rim, is what originally flowed strong enough enough to carve out the extensive canyon.
The Colorado River.
We came up from Flagstaff directly from the south, but because we went to desert watch tower we ended up going considerably East before heading back to Flagstaff. Along that road we saw much more of what we expected Arizona to look like. In Phoenix, and the drive north of Phoenix there was a lot of scrub brush and trees mixed in with the cacti. As we got closer to Flagstaff it reminded us more of Eastern Montana and the Dakotas with a lot of pine trees and some pinker rocks. Closer to the grand canyon there are large bushes/trees creating a forest around you. So as you drive up you're "suddenly" at the canyon. Nearer Cameron you encounter less of those scrub trees and more small bushes and grasses. It was missing the huge cacti but it looked more like we thought it would. It was such a windy day you could actually see a dust storm developing to the North East. For a little while it looked like we were going to drive right into it, then the road turned South. You really can't see it much in the above picture since cameras just don't capture as much. It started just hazy looking but eventually developed into a pink cloud that kept getting taller and taller.
*Grandma G later informed me that the dust from the storm actually got high enough in the atmosphere to make its way into the snow that fell in South Dakota!
Driving toward the San Fransisco Peaks.
After our busy Tuesday it was time to head south again on Wednesday. Good timing too considering we woke up to snow. We ended up encountering snow all the way through Sedona, keep in mind it was snowing when it was 55 degrees out too!
Our first stop was Slide Rock State Park. This was what I had looked forward to most about the trip. It's a series of rocks that have been work smooth by Oak Creek and are covered in a thin coating of algae so you can actually slide on the rocks. I didn't consider the elevation change, which meant it was colder. So we didn't get to actually swim. In fact when we first got there, it was windy and snowing sporadically. It was hard to get the kids out of the car to go investigate. Fortunately, once we got tucked down into the creek it cut the wind down a lot so we warmed up in the sun. Even without being able to play in the water it was the BEST part of the whole trip. I really wished we were there when it was a little warmer simply because it was so beautiful and had so much potential for fun water play. We still had a great time wandering around, climbing over the rocks and crossing the creek to explore. The Grand Canyon is the main attraction but this area, and Sedona are much more beautiful.
Kayda let Carson use her camera and he started having so much more fun. He had refused to be in pictures until he started having the opportunity to take his own.
Everyone was getting hungry so we had to leave to go find food. That is the most annoying thing about traveling by plane and staying in hotels. Normally I would've brought a cooler with sandwiches and such but we just didn't have the gear. Sedona is gorgeous, I could settle there quite happily and never get tired of the view.
We didn't linger long in Sedona, it would've been fun to explore more but the wind was so cold, and we were still getting snowed on. So it was time to move on. Our last tourist destination was Tuzigoot National Monument. I was hesitant about whether or not to make this stop. It was absolutely worth it. These pueblos were stunning and much larger than I had anticipated. I couldn't find the sign again to verify but at one point in the surrounding areas they estimated several thousand people had lived there. The plaza and surrounding buildings were created over several hundred years. The homes were built up on the hills in order to reserve the land below for farming, have a better look out and escape the flooding. When you walk around there is one door way. One. Their research is pointing to roof entries. There weren't doors needed because they had hatches on the roofs. You didn't need space between buildings because you walked across the roofs to get between them.
Unlike the Tusayan ruins these had fire hearths in almost every room, meaning the majority of them were living quarters instead of storage. There was actually a lot of really interesting information. They found thousands of artifacts from these ruins. They also talked about upkeep. It isn't something I'd ever thought about before. Once they have excavated the ruins they have to maintain them. You don't think about erosion applying to something so old. They have to mix up a type of cement from the local soil and re-mortar the structure.
It was still very windy, though not nearly so cold. It was gusting hard enough it was almost knocking me off my feet.
Dillon was cracking me up for this area, he was asking for pictures constantly. I was happy to have someone eager for pictures.
This is what most of the drive from Phoenix to Flagstaff looked like. Brush with huge fields of sagauro cacti growing in them.
We stopped at a gas station and were able to get over to one of the cacti. Dillon was amazed at the size, he thought they were as tall as Daddy when he saw them from far away.
There were some amazing cacti, we saw some with as many as 10 "branches". It was odd, almost all of them looked rotten around the bottom, we didn't see any that looked "healthy".
The plane ride home was uneventful, Dillon ended up sick for the take off and landing of both flights unfortunately. Coming home from 70+ degree weather and sunshine to gray, rain and 50ish was difficult. The kids would much rather have stayed in the sun. It was a busy trip but was saw a lot and mostly had a great time! The kids keep talking about wanting to go back to slide rock. Daddy wants to go raft through the Grand Canyon. Someday!
