The reason why I haven’t been updating here lately is that I’ve been on the road, wandering, en routard, cruising the highways and exploring the state of Arizona.
On Tuesday, myself, Jessica and Jessica’s parents set out for northern Arizona. We took the scenic route through the beautiful Salt River Canyon.
On that first day we saw the smoke on the horizon. The plume grew and grew as we passed through the towns of Snowflake and Show Low. Little did we realise that we were looking at the start of the worst fire in Arizona’s, if not the nation’s, history.
The fire, quite literally, cast a pall over the whole trip.
We spent the first night in Winslow where they are inordinately proud of being mentioned in an Eagles song once.
The next day, we visited the awe-inspiring, slightly inaccurately named, Meteor Crater. I had been wanting to visit this place for quite some time having read so much about it
We went on to see the (volcanic) Sunset Crater and the Native American ruins at Wupatki, both of which were quite lovely in their own, different ways.
The next two days were spent exploring the Grand Canyon. The North Rim seemed a lot less touristy (probably because it’s harder to get to) than the more popular South Rim.
True to its name, the canyon is indeed grand. And scary if, like me, you’re afraid of big long drops with rocks at the bottom.
The trip finished with a visit to the red rocks in the town of Sedona. Sedona is kind of like an American Glastonbury, full of crystal shops, astrologers, psychics and other peddlers of new age nonsense.
It’s a great town, though. We had what was undoubtably the best meal of the trip there at a restaurant called Robert’s.
From there, it was a long drive back to Sierra Vista but we had time to stop and see the fantastic cliff dwellings at the completely inaccurately named Montezuma’s Castle.
So, that was my road trip. It was hot, hot, hot the whole time with temperatures around 40 degrees celcius. But, as the locals will tell you, "It’s a dry heat".
Between us, Jessica and I took about 400 pictures during the trip. I won’t bore with all my holiday snaps but here are the selected highlights.