Arizona Pictures: July 2005
Our first sight-seeing stop was in Winslow, once an important
maintenance center for the Santa Fe railroad but now better known as
the place where the singer was "standing on the corner" when a girl in
a flatbed Ford slowed down to take a look. The town has capitalized on
its fame from the song by the Eagles (see that bird perched on the
window sill?) by building a park with a statue of a fellow with a
guitar. Unfortunately, last year the store building the provided a
place for the mural was destroyed by fire.The wall is still standing,
but safety concerns led the city to fence the area..
Northern Arizona is high, fairly cool and well forested. This picture
was taken a few miles south of Flagstaff.
As one drives south from Flagstaff toward Phoenix, the terrain gets
dryer.
Our first full day in Phoenix, we drove across the city to visit South
Mountain Park, a mountainous area that's on the city's south side.
Southern Phoenx is hieavily Hispanic. The mountains on the horizon and
the palm trees are reminiscent of cities such as Los Angeles-- but
Phoenix appears generally tidier, cleaner and more evenly prosperous.
Of course, practically everything in Phoenix is less than fifty years
old.
South Mountain Park provides visitors with great vistas of the
sprawling metropolis and the Valley of the Sun.
Saguaro cacti are ubiquitous in the Phoenix area and down into Mexico.
We read they are very slow-growing, so this impressive specimen must be
well over a hundred years old. It appears a bird has made its
nest atop this cactus. Holes in the trunk provide homes for other
critters.
On our way back we drove around the eastern side of Phoenix to Mesa, to
visit the Commemorative Air Force museum. The CAF restores and
preserves in flying condition military aircraft, especially planes from
the World War II era. Here's an example:
On another sightseeing daytrip we headed north and northwest. This
picture was snapped a few miles from Sedona:
Sedona is an affluent, artsy town with lots of well-heeled tourists who
need to spend money. At one of the many art galleries we saw these
horses. One has been well fed and has a nice, shiny coat. The other
appears to need better nutrition.
From Sedona we headed westerly to the old (well, early 20th
century) mining town of Jerome, which boomed due to a tremendous copper
mine. Over its productive live of some twenty years, the mine produced
almost 400,000 tons of copper, along with some significant amounts of
lead and gold. This structure atop the main shaft is billed as the only
remaining example of its kind in Arizona.
Another nice thing we did on this trip was to see Virginia in Sun City.
Her home is right alongside a golf course. (We spotted a coyote on the
golf course; however it had no clubs so we must assume it wasn't there
to play a round.) She has a couple of splendid saguaros, one of which
is in the back yard. It looks to us as if the goggle-eyed cactus is
rather alarmed by the proximity of that palm tree and has thrown up its
arms in fright
So it was a great vacation. Who says Arizona in the summertime is too
hot for having fun?