Flagstaff

After we left the Grand Canyon area, we were invited to spend a few days camped at my cousin's daughter's place on the outskirts of Flagstaff. That's the sunset from their front yard on our first night there. Flagstaff is famous for being the cool part of Arizona. Hundreds drive up to the area from Phoenix for the weekend, returning to the heat in the valley on Sunday night. This makes traffic on I17 pretty heavy on Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. Flagstaff has trees. Big Ponderosa Pines. And elk and deer. I saw three dead elk at the side of the road on the way home. Of course, my tale of trying to see live ones is well told by now.

Around the corner from where we stayed is a prairie dog town. I have no idea why since they are universally considered a nuisance in these parts. But they sure are cute.

On Thursday, we went into town to see the shops.. er sights. We started with the train station which is now also the visitors center in addition to being a working Amtrak station.

There's also quite a mural facing the station.

Flagstaff is a smallish city maybe about the size of Burlington back home that has a country feel to it. It has an old time, classic section of town dating back to the stagecoach days. It also is large enough to have a couple of malls and all the big box stores and brands. It's also a college town with that attendant vibe. We cruised the shops in the old town section looking at Indian jewelry and baskets and rugs. There were also crystal and incense shops and a wonderful gallery of photo work. Lots of hiking supplies as well. The eateries are on the border of the college section and feature breweries and pizza shops. We opted to eat out of town a ways at a little Italian place in a mall called Mama Louise's. It had a mixed write-up in Yelp and we took a chance but it was very disappointing. Then back to camp for elk watch, an exercise in futility.

On Friday, we had arranged for my cousin and her husband to come up from Dewey to meet us and go on the Sky-Ride, the chair lift up the Sno-Bowl ski area just West of town. It was free for seniors over 70, which three of us are, and I had a discount coupon for Diane so it was going to be a cheap ride.

When we got there, my cousin looked up at the chair lift ascending the hill into the distance and decided to sit it out. Diane and I had ridden chair lifts in the past and weren't bothered by it so off we went. The lift goes up to the top of Humphreys Peak, one of the San Francisco peaks just Northwest of Flagstaff and a popular skiing, hiking and camping destination. On the way up the mountain we discovered that it seems to be the thing to do for riders of the lift to throw strings of beads or ribbons with bells on them to decorate the trees below.

After we had passed a certain level on the way up we also saw quite a few of these pretty yellow flowers. I looked them up when I got back to camp and found out that they are Yellow Columbine.

At the top, we elected to ride the lift around and not get off, but I did get this shot of the upper lift house. The board on the front reads "Coconino National Forest, Elevation 11,500 feet".

When the lift started down we were treated to a magnificent view extending for miles and miles. And right at that time, may camera batteries decided they'd had enough, so, no pics of that. But it was worth the ride. The temperature down in Flagstaff was 85 but at the top of the mountain it was 51. We had brought our winter jackets for just such an event so we were fine.

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for a late lunch, meeting my cousin's grand-daughter on the way. Then it was back to camp for the night and back into Dewey on Saturday. On the way back, I noticed that the batteries weren't charging on the coach so that meant another trip into the shop for more repairs. That turned out better than I had hoped for. They fixed the dash AC after finding a leak and recharging the system and they fixed the charging system after finding a broken wire. No we're hunkered down back at my cousins place trying to outlast the heat.