Our run across southern Cali was chosen with a specific destination in mind: Joshua. We had now accomplished that visit and Stacy was becoming very fed up with dealing with me 24/7. She wanted to visit with some of her own blood for once. Her lil’ cousin Joey happened to live in Phoenix, AZ. He had graciously offered us a warm place to sleep and potentially a shower. Woo-Hoo!
We arrived in Phoenix slightly after dinner time with pizza and apple pie as 'olive branches'. The following few days were spent cleaning ourselves and our clothes. OH! I almost forgot…Joey had also extended the offer of garage space to change out the now dangerously broken front LCA bushings on Ele. We had been dealing with their degradation for about a month now, and I had ordered a beefier replacement bushing at AutoZone in Joshua Tree. I was all set to be the man and fix my broken ride with limited tools, in a driveway, and be on our way for just the $50 cost of parts. I’ve been doing that with the MR2’s for years now, yet Honda and Toyota design their cars different. While I have performed a very similar fix on 3 of my MR2’s, I would need significant heavy tooling for this job on the Honda and a lot of time. So…I defeatedly call the dealer, he had availability that day, 0.8 miles from Joey's house. I bit the bullet and paid for a ‘simple bushing change’ out at $700. Oh well, we budgeted for such events and I should not ever need to worry about this issue again for the life of the car. Plus, they washed the car. It almost seemed blasphemous.
Anyway, Joey had work for the week and the girls had school, so Stacy and I left for a few days to drive down to Tuscon, AZ and Saguaro National Park!
This is one of the older monument-turned-parks, and was the first to specifically be set aside to preserve a desert landscape. At the time, all of the other parks were terribly beautiful to look at with their glaciers, geysers, and picturesque mountainous terrain. It took lots of effort petitioning and persuading by local gardening clubs and aristocrats. It is a lovely place, but when it was created the surrounding area was still undeveloped. In the interim, Tucson has blossomed into a bustling metropolis squeezing into the park's personal space. And the park has two units on either side of town. It was great to see the famous cacti, and explore the desert, and wonderful to see so many people utilizing this national park in the way New Yorkers use central park.
We ended up just doing a few day hikes to explore both units. We saw many prime examples of local flora and fauna.
The highlight of our last day in the area is the ‘Sonoran Desert Musuem’. It is a small zoo/ aviary / arboretum /conservatory rolled into one lovely place that has a surplus of snowbird volunteers. There we saw much more flora and fauna local to the desert:
They even had - GASP - a hummingbird aviary!
With Tucson over, we headed back up to Phoenix for the weekend to try to get Joey and the girls to experience climbing!
With Tucson over, we headed back up to Phoenix for the weekend to try to get Joey and the girls to experience climbing!
Day 1 attempt - Rain:
Giving us the opportunity to hide in small wind swept caves, waiting for the sun to reappear.
Day 2 attempt - Rain:
Apparently, according to the relatives, we brought the PA rain and the CA clouds with us. So instead we went to the playground, cooked lovely dinners, ate cake, and played Rainbow Six.
The final park in AZ is Petrified Forest. You can guess what is there and why it is a famous park. I spent almost 3 days trailing around after an ecstatic photographer as the lighting changed and differences in minerals produced varying subjects every step of the trails we walked. Here are some examples. I'm sure there will be many more colorful displays of the wood turned rock on the Facebook albums.
I think Stacy had fun.
We were now to run up to Utah, but Oh no! 18” of white stuff was to fall in the next few hours and the passes were closing. We decided to tie up loose ends we missed earlier and head back up towards the north rim of the Grand Canyon to explore Page, AZ, mostly known for Antelope Canyon which is that smoothly weathered slot canyon that produces varying warm shades of color, sunbeams, and waterfalls of fine sand. Its on a lot of ‘must visit’ lists. It is on Navajo land and you must visit on a guided tour. So we spent 2 days weathering the rain in Page (lower elevation) and exploring the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area which is famous for the Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado River:
and the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation, specifically what they call Hazdistazi or "spiral rock arches" a.k.a. Lower Antelope Canyon:
-K
