Heading North (not to Alaska, it just felt that way)

Scott took this after we reached the top of the 
plateau out of Sedona. 

I'm writing this from Page, Arizona after making some changes in our itinerary due to a sudden understanding of the weather ahead! That happened when we left Cottonwood, AZ for Winslow, AZ and took "the scenic route".  That decision is all the stranger considering we left in pouring rain. But the lure of Sedona and glimpses of the beautiful scenery fogged our thoughts. And fogging did in deed happen. Thoughts of Japanese woodcuts floating through our minds as we had glimpses of the cliffs and red rock through Sedona. But once through this charming town reality flooded in - flood warnings, closed roads in either direction, and suddenly no place to turn around.  The river beside the road was raging, frightening really. But this is a numbered road, right? Eternal opportunists, we knew it was going to climb out of that torrent. But we didn't know how far up, only that it was 30 miles to Flagstaff. So Cottonwood is at 3,300 ft and Sedona is at 4,400 ft. and then, Flagstaff (where we were going to turn off for Winslow) is at 7,000 ft. In the middle of that route, if you check Google, there is a maze and that maze is most of that altitude climb with hairpin turns. Before we reached that point, it started to snow. From then on there were no places to pull of the road (with a trailer). We felt bad for the cars behind us until we caught up to one before us and slowed down, slightly. We do drive a lot through snow in Vermont. One helpful sign was a few cars coming the other direction, although some had a lot of snow on their hoods. It was a tense drive (for me, I do almost all the driving, Scott is a fantastic navigator and watches ahead, signaling problems to me). And it took 3 hours to drive that 60 miles. Once we reached the top of the plateau, then it was just staying on the road. We only saw one car that slid off and not far.

Our site at Cave Creek Regional Park had a 
lovely view of the meadows around the park.

It was a little overcast but we enjoyed a walk 
around the campsites. It was too late to try one
of their trails.

 

It was a huge relief to reach Flagstaff and get on the interstate headed east to Winslow and only 60 more miles to go. The snow ended 20 miles later and off the road up ahead loomed a huge edifice in the middle of nowhere - a Indian casino - cheap food said Scott! What a strange place! Huge hotel and casino miles from anywhere. The gigantic parking lot had maybe 12 cars and one RV. We entered and honestly, it's a sad sight for me, 4 restaurants (only 2 open), huge football fields of gambling machines and neon, and only a few old people playing and a large staff of Native American people hopefully getting paid well. We ate in the Sports Bar (the "fancy dinner restaurant" and buffet were closed, the coffee shop was open) and the meal was OK. Such a depressing place but I hope it brings revenue and jobs to the people we've screwed since we arrived on this continent. So after that pause for food, we continued on to Winslow, AZ and the Homolovi State Park. 

The Copper Art Museum is in the old High School
in Clarkdale, which closed in 1962.

The collection is enormous with copper pieces
from all over the world.

The color of these glass pieces comes from the
addition of copper to the glass. 

This was just one of the many rooms and concentrated on kitchen equipment.

So how about returning to bring you up to date from Casa Grande to Cottonwood. We left Casa Grande on the 19th of March to stay at Cave Creek Regional Park northeast of Phoenix and just outside of Carefree, a planned community with lots of famous people including Dick Van Dyke. We enjoyed wide attractive sites with views. Only here for one night, we didn't do a lot but liked walked around the area. Our next night was at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood. What a lovely spot and near the charming historic (for western civilization here in Arizona) communities of Cottonwood and Clarkdale. After settling into our nice site, we headed off for "historic downtown Clarkdale" and the Copper Museum. Clarkdale was founded in 1912 as a company town by William A. Clark, one of the wealthiest men in the country. An early example of a planned community, it was one of the most modern mining towns in the world, including telephone, telegraph, electrical, sewer and spring water services. The copper mine itself was located just up the hill in Jerome. We walked around the town and spent some time in the beautiful Copper Art Museum, located in the old high school. 

The Tuzigoot Ruins are at the top of the hill on
the left. You can see the snow on the distant
mountains,

A close up look at the stone walls.

paved paths led us all around the buildings.

Here you can see the network of rooms.

From the top looking down the spine of rock and the ruins. This day was overcast with the rain, quite heavy at times starting later that afternoon and continuing the following day as we headed north through Sedona.

Our other stop that afternoon was at the picturesque Tuzigoot National Monument, a 2 to 3 story pueblo ruin just out of the town. Built along the spine of a natural outcrop of rock overlooking the Verde River, it had around 110 rooms. Excavated between 2033 - 35, it became a national monument in 1939. It was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400 and is the largest of pueblos in the Verde Valley.

The next morning we left for Winslow, Arizona and that brings me to the end of this post. More on Winslow and our trip north to Page in my next post.