Wed March 11th: Sedona

The day after our Grand Canyon trip we drove to the red rock country of Sedona. We took the bulky motor home as it appeared to be a fairly easy round trip of less than 100 miles. Problem is, having just visited the Grand Canyon, how can any rock and canyon scenery top that? Well, maybe not, but the red rocks were superb, and carved into all sorts of strange shapes; the one on the left looks like a flying saucer, presumably full of little red men rather than green ones.

 The town of Sedona, in the heart of the rock formations, was far more congested than we bargained for, as was the whole area, but perhaps not surprising given the lovely surroundings. However, it meant we couldn’t park the motorhome to take a more leisurely look or take photos, and by the time we had found a place the red rocks has nearly gone. The parking spot was pleasantly right by the river, so we had lunch there.

There were high cliffs across the road, also in a beautiful setting. The whole area is served by many walking trails, ancient Indian sites and a preserved mining town. We said if we came back we would need to stay in Sedona and explore it properly.

The Sedona area also attracts mystics. It is claimed to be one of the premier places on Earth for vortexes, points at which swirling waves of energy are emitted and can be interacted with. The precise locations are known and draw people who wish to harness these energies. I suppose it’s one of those things you have to believe in to derive any benefit from.

The road follows the same river that we stopped beside for lunch in a narrow canyon. It then climbs steeply from the river to the lip of the canyon wall where we stopped at a viewpoint to look back down the canyon.

A Navajo Indian market was set up in the viewpoint with certified genuine Navajo made goods. But who certifies the certifiers?  Nothing we wanted, although Jane was interested in the beadwork. 

In two days we leave the natural beauty of this area for the ultimate in manmade tinsel town- Las Vegas.

Tuesday 10th March: The Grand Canyon

Yesterday we left Tucson and drove due north to Flagstaff, still in Arizona, and a good base from which to see the Grand Canyon. Leaving Tucson, the road stayed on the flat Sonoran Desert for 150 miles, well past Phoenix, but then steadily climbed towards Flagstaff’s 7,200 feet altitude. We passed patches of snow in the ponderosa pine forest after we passed the 6,000 ft. roadside marker. It wasn’t much above freezing when we arrived and it quickly dipped to zero after sun set, and then on down to minus 4ºC. Come back desert, we shouldn’t have deserted you!

We had booked an organised tour of the Grand Canyon South Rim with All-Star Tours, and I must say they gave us a superb day out by any standards, with precision organisation and an excellent guide. We were picked up at the campsite for the 1½ hour drive to the South Rim. Soon we were climbing again. At the 8,000 ft. marker, snow was thick on the ground as the photo shows. A bit higher up there’s a small ski resort where our tour guide is also an instructor.

We descended again for the South Rim to arrive at Grand Canyon Village, still pretty high up at 6,800 feet. That first view of the Canyon, if you’ve never seen it before, is absolutely breathtaking. It’s 10 miles across, a mile deep, and 277 miles long following the snaking Colorado River.

The colours of the different rock levels add to the overwhelming spectacle. Our guide took us to a number of different locations from where we could appreciate the subtle differences of the colours and views. I’ll follow with a few photos to illustrate.

The canyon was created by movements of the Earth’s plates with the Colorado River carving a further deep gorge in which it is mostly hidden. It is visible over my left shoulder, a mile down. You can white-water raft it, if you’re brave enough, as the current flows in some places at 20 mph and some of the rapids fall into the most difficult category when the river is running full. John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran, let the first expedition to navigate the Colorado River in 1869. The expedition took rather a long time but then maybe a one-armed canoeist isn’t an ideal formula. 

Our last viewing stop was from the Desert View Visitor Center where an Ancient Pueblo People’s watch tower had been recreated, but with added height, and including traditional paintings in the interior. Not much is known about these tribes so I’m not sure how much imaginative licence was used. 

The tower also gave us a fantastic final view of the canyon including the most visible part of the river. Maybe the ancient tribes built their towers to enjoy the lovely views just like us tourists.

We then headed back the 70 miles to Flagstaff taking another route through the Navajo Reservation. Here we ran along the Little Colorado River that runs into the Colorado proper, and its gorge a mere 1,500 feet deep! This was the site of a tightrope walk by a certain Nik Wallenda in 2013 without a safety net. This kind of stunt is not allowed in the Grand Canyon National Park, but Indian Reservations are legally a state within a state and make their own laws and regulations. I suppose pow-pows and peace-pipes are just as effective as arbitration and conciliation tribunals.  

We were lucky in having a fine clear day, and it had all amounted to a truly awesome experience. 

Saturday 7th March: Tombstone

The town is generally associated with its most notorious event, the “Gunfight at the OK Corral”. Tombstone was more than that; it was a genuine Wild West town, established in 1877 in the empty uplands of the Sonoran Desert.

Its founder was a soldier called Ed Schieffelin from nearby Fort Huachuca. The fort kept an eye on the warlike Apaches whose territory it was. Ed used to wander the desert wilderness “looking for stones”, as he told his fellow soldiers. Their comment was, “the only stone you’ll find is your tombstone”.

But Ed was really looking for silver deposits, and he found them in 1877 in abundance. Word spread rapidly, and fortune seekers followed by service providers soon founded a settlement that Ed named Tombstone after his soldier comrades’ joke. This is a photo of the mining early on. The pack mules are pulling ore drams down the hill. 

Today the general appearance of Tombstone the town is much as it would have been in the mid 1880’s, with some reconstruction following fires and decay. Yes, it’s a tourist town, but with a high level of authenticity.

It was a rough, tough mining town, with drinking, gambling and prostitution amply provided. All were perfectly legal. In fact, the one building that claims to be 100% unaltered from that time supplied all those services and entertainment as well: the Birdcage Theatre. This is the original bar with an original bullet hole in the bar front wooden column about half way down. 

The photo shows the theatre auditorium, with the stage on the left. The theatre boxes on the upper level were furnished with curtains so that customer services could be discretely provided while the performance was in session.

Gambling was laid on in the basement that was so well patronised that the tables ran continuously, 24/7. It you wanted to play, you put your name down and were given a slot. It still holds the world record for the longest continuous poker game in history: 8 years, 5 months and 3 days. This is where it was played. The furniture is original.

The town sheriff had the impossible task of keeping order. He was backed up by the marshal, a government law officer. The sheriff was locally elected so was often tempted to overlook misdemeanours for reasons of personal patronage. The sheriff here allowed a wild bunch called the Clantons a free rein. The marshal, Virgil Earp, had had enough of this and forced a showdown, backed by brother deputies Wyatt and Morgan Earp, together gambling friend ex-dentist ‘doc’ Holliday.

The result was the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, a livery stable in the town at the rear of which the confrontation happened to occur. Three of the Clanton gang were killed, and the rest suffered gunshot wounds apart from Wyatt. The shootout is reconstructed several times a day in the grounds of the OK Corral not far from the actual spot. It’s a bit cheesy, but very professionally presented and acted. I guess they get enough practice.

Next to the OK Corral is photographer C S Fly’s premises. He was a real photographer who actively recorded the events of the time, and the exhibition of his photographs told a fascinating story. He took the very first picture of Geronimo, the Apache chief. His second photo didn’t come out because an arrow broke the lens.

He recorded a variety of scenes from Apache life, like the following photo of an Apache crib and then, beneath it, Apache dwellings called “wickiups”. We aren’t told if these are the ordinary or luxury version.

On the edge of town, the head posts at Boot hill graveyard reinforce the violent nature of many citizens demise.

And if our friend Paul Rook from Bradford reads this, my advice would be, “don’t upset any Chinamen”!

It was a much more interesting day than we expected, and we felt that it had given us a real insight into life in those tough times. 

Thursday 5th March: The Desert Museum

The Desert Museum sets out to create areas of different desert landscapes with authentic plants and animals. It’s a delightful setting in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains, on the edge of the Saguaro National Park. We stopped on the drive there to admire the scenery and were tempted follow this inviting path and visit the Museum on another day.

In the museum the trails lead you through what you could expect to find in various parts of the Sonoran Desert, for example these types of cactus. The column one in the front would be about 8 ft. tall and the one with many arms in the background about 20 ft. It’s difficult to get the scale if there’s no person in the photo, and Jane refused to climb the column cactus and sit on top although I said the spikes were probably quite soft and spongy.

Many of the birds and animals were not in any sort of cages as they were in their natural habitat. At our coffee break in the outdoor café this colourful bird appeared on the wall in front of us looking for crumbs from our muffins. Our bird book told us it was a pyrrhuloxia, aka the muffin bird.

Plenty of lizards, too, roaming around. This one’s a desert spiny lizard, about 15 inches long including tail.

Not all reptiles were appropriate be mixing with the visitors. For instance there are many desert snakes, including 13 different species of rattlesnake. We viewed these from the safety of their glass vivariums. Similarly, the mountain lion, of which a small number still exist in the wild, was in an enclosure. This one ended up here after being found as a cub in a suburb of Los Angeles, its mother presumably having been killed- or maybe some kooky celeb just mislaid it.

Another enclosure was the free flight aviary of the hummingbirds. They were happily building nests, all of 2 inches in diameter, as shown in the photo. The eggs take only 2½ weeks to hatch, and about 3 weeks for the brood to fly the nest. Two chicks maximum. Average lifespan is about 6 years in the aviary, and 4 in the wild.

Not everything was on a grand scale, these small cacti could almost have been knitted (by Jane, of course).

There were extensive mineral exhibits. Mineral discoveries in the latter part of the 19^th century resulted in the establishment of many mines and mining towns and encouraged numbers immigrants into Arizona. In the process of prospecting and from random discoveries in general, numbers of dinosaur bones have been discovered. This is an example of where these bones would have come to light.

I’ve got to sign off with a view of the cowboy film cactus, the saguaro. There are 1.5 million of them in the adjacent National Park and some have obviously sneaked into the Museum grounds.

The catering facilities were also good. We had a splendid day out, which was the general opinion as the Museum displays a 5* Tripadvisor rating and top attraction out of 291 in the area.

Nerdy Tuesday 3rd March: The Boneyard

There is another aircraft enthusiast’s trip not to be missed. It’s a bus tour of the part of the Davis-Monthan US Airforce base where surplus military aircraft for the whole of the USA are stored.  Over 4,000 planes: it is nicknamed the “Boneyard”. The bus tour is organised from the Pima Museum that we visited a few days ago.

There are two main reasons for locating the Boneyard in Tucson. Firstly, the dry desert climate causes the least deterioration and, secondly, the ground is rock-hard, being baked clay covered by a deep layer of gravel, so no artificial surface is needed to take the weight of any aircraft.

The Boneyard lies within the Davis-Monthan base perimeter, and its runways are used to ferry planes in and out, but the Boneyard itself is controlled centrally from Washington DC. It has two purposes: to store US military planes for rapid restoration to operational condition, and to provide a spare parts service to any friendly country in the world.

So what happens? Say a front-line fighter is being superseded by a new generation machine. The old one is still pretty good and would be extremely useful in a sudden crisis, so it needs keeping in readiness. A good example here is the F4 Phantom. So they fly the Phantoms in to Davis-Monthan, wash them if necessary in a kind of large car wash (they invariably do this with navy planes to get rid of all the salt) and then spray the vulnerable surfaces like the cockpit glass with layers of latex. Here’s a Phantom that’s been given the treatment.

Interestingly, this plane was flown by the only US “ace” flier in the Vietnam War, Capt Steve Ritchie. “Ace” means he shot down 5 enemy aircraft, as signified by the 5 stars on the engine intake. It looks like it’s masked up for a respray, but that’s the latex. Helicopters look even odder because they remove the rotor blades for storage elsewhere. 

Engines may also be stored separately in these steel cylinders. Somehow you expect a more high-tech solution than this line of lookalike Long John Silver’s treasure chests.

Rockets too form part of the air menagerie. I think these are Thor rockets (not entirely sure), early generation missiles designed to deliver a nuclear strike. They could probably sell the empty tube on the left in the photo to a dog agility group.

Aircraft magazine pictures always show the Boneyard as long lines of identical aircraft tailing off into infinity. It’s quite difficult to take these sort of shots from a moving bus through glass, but here’s a few just for the record.

You’ll note the Boneyard looks a lot greener than the stark, bare desert of the magazine photos. That’s because it’s wintertime and, with a little rain, grass and other scrub plants green up. In a couple of months it’ll be back to its normal uniform gritty sand colour.

The rows being cannibalised for spare parts are obvious; several of these below have missing tails but there’ll be many other items removed not apparent from this distance. 

The technicians working on the aircraft need weather protection, not so much from the very occasional rain or cold, but from the fierce heat. These mobile hangars provide that protection and can be quickly positioned over any aircraft as required. Great also for weekend raves.

Our guide pointed out some spares ready for dispatch. These looked like complete aircraft bodies minus the wings and tails, but the guide said anything not designated as military reserve is in principle for sale. 

This was a fascinating insight into an unknown aspect of military organisation i.e. what do they do with their old planes. To quote the guide again, he said the Boneyard was a highly profitable enterprise where receipts from parts and aircraft sales are ten times greater than the cost of running it.