Vacation - Part 2

Arizona

Okay, so we have plans with Robert and Linda to go out driving around the desert and see stuff. (Dave’s favorite word) 8 am and they are ready to go. Now we went to bed at 5am. I still have sleep in my eye. Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Am I moving? Okay. Just make sure I don’t crash into something.

Out we go. Beautiful! I saw that ‘Welcome to Vegas’ sign all the movies have. (See Godfather) When I finally moved out of Arizona back in High School, I swore to myself I would never return. I hated it. The brown. The brown. The lack of color, green, life and such. Hated it.

See that little road? We were on that. How beautiful is this scenery?

It was beautiful! We visited this ‘haunted’ place. It was a wee bit difficult to find due to the fact that AZ doesn’t mark a darn thing. Find it or don’t find it. They don’t care. The cacti had blooms on them. Flowers all over the place I have never seen. One of these cacti had blooms that look like someone sprayed silly string all over it. It was so neat.

This flower was growing right out of a rock.

We went off roading throughout the desert. Off roading. Hahahaha! You get off pavement it isn’t like the ‘dirt roads’ we have where there’s gravel and such or chipped and tarred. All roads out there off pavement are dirt. Why you ask? Cause they don’t get enough rain to make a hill of beans difference in the shape of it. They are all passable. Well, in the desert anyway.

This was actually taken in New Mexico but they happen in AZ just as well.

We visited this little town called Chloride. IT was need. This is where we found out about the Haunted Towns. It was a very poor town. People decorated their places with blue Skyye Vodka bottles. It was…different to say the least.

There was Cholla cactus everywhere it seemed. That would be the ‘jumping cactus’ I was so readily warned about when I was younger. The babies of this plant will jump towards heat and instantly curl into what ever it has hit. I’ve had one friend with one that grew into their wrist and another where it grew into his knee. Not fun.

When the plant dies it loses all it’s thorns and turns into this pretty wood with holes all in it. I laughed. People sold that stuff to tourists. Guess who was a tourist now? No, I didn’t buy any. But Robert jumped out, broke a piece off and then couldn’t figure out why we didn’t want any. Lol!

Second day. We went to the place where the great big crater is. The one where this meteorite hit and made a hole in the ground a mile wide. Wow. No, it wasn’t worth the $15 they charged to get in, but Linda and I enjoyed the museum that they had. Very, very interesting. I enjoy learning new stuff. Guess which country gets hit with the most meteorites? Austria. Interesting.

This crater is a full mile wide. This is a piece of the meteroite.

Then we went through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Now THAT was neat! I can remember my family going through this right before we left AZ. I was so disappointed. Having gone through it again, I can see why we were. You have to go through it either at daybreak or sunset. Wow do the colors just jump out. I saw where we stopped as a kid and it was the blandest of the whole place. Get away from there and there were colors everywhere. My only mourn was that I didn’t have a panoramic camera. Oh how could I get on film what my eyes could see? It was everywhere. This great gorge cut out and layers upon layers of color exploding everywhere. WOW!

You HAVE to see this in person. It stretches on and on.....

Further on down the road was the Petrified Forest. Apparently, from what I read, there was a flood that traveled all these trees down to this area. The trees got waterlogged and sunk to the bottom. They soaked in all the mineral and such from the water and then got covered with something else (memory escapes me), which petrified it. Wow were they beautiful! They were all over the place too. When they are polished up, they are a most beautiful stone. There was a thin slab that was cut and polished as a tabletop. Price: $10,000. Wow! I got two little slivers for my nick knack shelf at a dollar a piece.

This stuff is everywhere! How pretty is this landscape?

This petrified log is made into a bridge.

We stayed that night in Prescott in this hotel that was over a hundred years old. It was so neat. It was so nice to GET OUT OF THE CAR! Next morning I had French toast stuffed with Prickly Pear Cactus jelly. YUM!! Gotta try something new everywhere we go. Now why would I want to have what I can get at home?

This is the cactus they make the jelly out of. It's those round things under the blooms that is the fruit.

Note to self: Find that jelly online and order big jar!

From there we went to Sedona. Now this is a tourist trap that my friend Olga brought me to when Dave sent me out to visit her when I was just pg with the Wild Man. It’s got all these neat shaped rocks. Rocks meaning there is a big mountaintop shaped neat. Like Snoopy rock and the twins, and the turtle and such.

Don't they make such a cute pair?

Crossed the Hover Dam. That was neat. I forgot how big it was. Then we went way up on this mountain to this town called something like Jerome. It was literally right on the side of the mountain. One of the stores in there makes kaleidoscopes. Wow were they cool! I loved the snowflake ones. You barely turn them and these beads and such inside glycerin gently slide and make snowflakes. How awesome. We spent more time in there than anywhere.

I forgot how big it was. This is from up in the mountain.

Back in the day. WAY back in the day, they wanted to keep the prostitutes away they called the main street Husbands Street. Hahaha. Wonder if it worked.

Driving around those roads on the edge of the mountain made the boys a bit nervous. They were glad to come back down. That town was at the level of over 7,000 feet above sea level. WOW!