#Gates50States

We’d planned on visiting Arizona in March of 2020 along with Nevada and California’s Death Valley NP, but Covid pushed those plans off until October. After all the craziness, we were glad to make the plans happen, and our Arizona stops provided the highlights of the trip. A fun bonus for this trip… Auntie Haley joined us!

We set up a base in Flagstaff to take in some of northern Arizona, Grand Canyon NP in particular. One can only get so much of a glimpse of the Grand Canyon in a day, but as our time is budgeted on our #gates50states adventures, we chose to arrive at the butt-crack of dawn and head north to catch sunrise at the south rim. Such a neat experience to see the sun rise over such a pretty place on our planet.

We set the kids’ expectations long before the early morning, and they were really good about getting up and getting moving without complaint. The drive was pretty non-descript in the dark, and nautical twilight emerged as we approached the parking lot. It was cold, but we were ready. We set up on the rim just west of Mathern Point and watched the sun rise over Kaibab. Gorgeous.

We then walked along the paved path near 2 miles to Kaibab to hike down to Ooh Aah Point. On the way we saw a number of elk casually walking on the opposite side of the road!

Lots of switchbacks going down, and while the kids were familiar with switchbacks from Storm King in Olympic NP, the footing and scenery were completely different.

Among the many amazing aspects of the Grand Canyon is how its appearance changes as the sun’s angle changes and the light changes. No two hikes are really the same, and even the hike out is quite different viewing from the hike in.

The hike out was more strenuous, of course, but our seasoned hiking family knocked it out with ease. We took the shuttle back to the visitor’s center, where Jenn, Lincoln and Lydia rented bikes for a ride along the rim, and Henry and I picked up Junior Ranger books, walked along the rim a bit more, and earned his badge.

The next morning we took off to Sedona for a Pink Jeep Tour.

Many people visit Sedona for the off-roading and for the shopping experiences, but the hiking is pretty good, too. At the direction of our Jeep driver, we hiked Fay Canyon in the Coconino National Forest before getting out of Sedona for the day.

This proved to be a monster day, because after our morning and afternoon in Sedona, we visited the Lowell Observatory after dark. This was our Barber Motorsports Museum experience of the trip. Recall that we visited Barber in Alabama because we needed something to do, and it proved to be so amazing, so intriguing, so memorable, that we now refer to the most unexpected, pleasant surprises as our Barber experiences. Lowell was a Barber experience.

Covid hit Lowell as it hit everyone, and for months they were restricted from hosting visitors. Not long before we visited, they started opening up for small family units to use their six telescope public patio. As we’re not experienced with these types of things, we didn’t know quite what to expect. Upon arrival, a very nice employee took us to visit Percival Lowell’s (very massive) telescope.

Then he took us to visit the telescope used to discover Pluto. You read that correctly. The story of this discovery is worth a few minutes of your time to read.

Our guide then escorted us to the patio where he and two others assisted us in finding Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, one of Jupiter’s moons, our Moon, nebula, star clusters, binary stars, and just anything and everything cool they could find. It was freezing outside, but we barely noticed it as we moved around from telescope to telescope (the Moonraker was my favorite, and I’ll be looking to add one of his models to the deck of our retirement home someday), taking in the sights and processing the science out guides were dishing.

It was a late night to a long day, but what a day jam-packed with adventure and imagination.

We’ve prioritized National Parks in the past, but there are so many other neat places within the National Park Service’s purview that are pretty amazing, one of which is Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. The lava formations are just cool to observe… and quite daunting… you’d not want to fall into any of the formations. Walking amongst them is darn near impossible, but the paths bring the hiker right up next to what flowed from the earth about 1,000 years ago.

We wrapped up our time in Arizona doing Arizona stuff by renting a house in Mesa, hiking the Superstitions and relaxing by the pool. The kids enjoyed the change of pace, hiking amongst saguaros, & jumping in the pool.

Jenn and I have had our eye on the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix as a retirement destination for some time, and we like to seize every opportunity we get to hike amongst them. To strike a balance between an achievable hike with a sense of accomplishment and one that wasn’t too time consuming (recall we still had lots of school work with which to keep up), we chose Wedding Cake Hill via the Lost Goldmine Trail. Not too much elevation gain, some sleuthing to find where the trail crossed the National Forest line, some fun climbing at the top, and amazing pay-off views made it a great hike with the kids.

On our final evening, we went out for a fancy dinner at The White Chocolate Grill. The food was good, and we got to witness how the kids are growing and maturing. They can handle the nice restaurants now, and conduct themselves with good manners. I think we’re reaching them.

All in all, we got to see much of what makes Arizona special, and why it’s such a neat part of the Union.