Absolutely gorgeous!
Downtown Sedona is very nice - pedestrian-friendly, lots of art galleries and high-end merchants, good restaurants. One of our friends spends winters here and says it is her favorite place, and I can see why. We drive north on 89A, Oak Creek Canyon, the winding road we had driven down the night before in the rain.
North to Flagstaff and then east toward Albuquerque, we stop for a climb down Walnut Canyon National Monument, where a colony of pre-Columbian people called the Sinagua lived in cliff dwellings. It is hard to believe these people could have survived in such an arid region, but Sinagua means "without water" in Spanish, and these people became experts at collecting and conserving water. The cliff dwellings are in good condition and are everywhere along the walls of this canyon, which is also filled with Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine, and small red flowers called Penstemon.
The road to Albuquerque is an interesting one! We stop at Meteor Crater National Monument, a crater left by a meteor that landed here 50,000 years ago. It is here, too, that I find a nice stack of that red rock known throughout the area, and I fit one into the boot of our Mini next to that smooth Pacific stone, destined to be mortared permanently in the stone wall I am currently building (under the study at which I am writing this blog).
And then we are in Winslow, Arizona, taking photographs at that iconic corner memorialized in the Eagles song "Take it Easy."
Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
Such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me.
Such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me.
To tell you the truth - and what better place to tell the truth than in this blog? - I never liked the Eagles much (except for "Hotel California") nor this song in particular. (Seven women on his mind? Really?) But once that persistent melody starts going through your mind, it is hard to get rid of it.
We don't see any flat-bed Fords, but as we are leaving Winslow, Martha strikes something feathered that is running across the road (no sign of anything on the grill), and I can't help wondering if it was a roadrunner. Perhaps Wile E. Coyote should have ordered a Mini Cooper from the Acme company?
This is big, wide country, and we can see thunderstorms and lightning way off in the distance, dark clouds gathering around the mesas, and then dissipating. In our part of the country, the saying is that if you don't like the weather, just wait around five minutes and it will change. Here you can see weather approaching for miles and miles . . .
Our next stop is the Petrified Forest National Park, where I watch an interesting film on the creation of petrified wood, how cellulose was displaced by silica (sort of the way vinegar replaces water in a pickle, I decide). Unable to find any petrified wood along the side of the road, I break down and actually spend $25 in the gift shop for a largish chunk of petrified wood, the third and final stone to be installed in the aforementioned wall.
Interesting country to drive through! We pass through Gallup on Route 66 and stop at the El Rancho Hotel, built by film director D. W. Griffith's brother and a home for many Hollywood stars in its time, now on the National Register of Historic Places.
I also spot this roadside sign on the outskirts of Gallup, a tidy conjoining of Church and State:
ONE NATION UNDER GOD
JOHN 3:16
We finally arrive in Albuquerque, the dark wall of the Sandia Mountains a backdrop to a beautiful and colorful city - even the overpasses on the interstate are painted in shades of salmon and turquoise. Our hotel is the very nice Nativo Lodge, which has the added benefit of containing the Spirit Wind Cafe, meaning we don't need to fight traffic after a long day on the road to find a good place to eat tacos.
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