Destination Phoenix!

I had quite possibly the worst breakfast I've ever had in my life. Last nights over cooked roast beef with congealed gravy left out on the counter overnight would have been more appetizing! I made the mistake of eating having the breakfast buffet at the restaurant next to the motel. Hey, there were 20 other people in the room having it, can't be that bad right?

Let me sum it up:

• paper thin bacon, lots of fat and tasting vaguely rancid. CHECK!
• not quite cooked enough hash browns, but those bits that are cooked are burnt lending that unique smokey flavour throughout all of them. CHECK!
• scrambled eggs that had the texture and feel of a fine curd dry cottage cheese, cold too. CHECK!
• and the worst part, the beverage they had the nerve to call coffee. CHECK!

Thankfully the pancakes were edible and there was lots of fresh fruit to nibble on.

That disaster over with, I hit the road for Flagstaff in search of a Charbucks or perhaps a place that could pull me a decent espresso shot(I'm really really really missing my espresso machine by now).

Along the way I see signage for the turn off to Wupatki National Monument. Since it was on the way to Flagstaff, I thought what the heck, a wee detour could be fun. Shortly after getting on the road there was a road sign saying it was 30 miles away. Wasn't sure I wanted to do that big of a detour so I pulled a U-Turn and headed back to the highway, along the way I pulled into the info station setup to learn more about this area and find out what Wupatki was. First thing I see is a big map showing the road is actually a loop that comes out back on the highway, and it's reasonably twisty! Woo Hoo!!

Back to Wupatki I go, the park is made up of several ruins in different locations with the main one also being the ranger information station. The first ruin is Lomaki, a couple of smaller ruins situated in a box canyon that used to have water flowing in it. Stopped there fora quick look and then hit the road for Wupatki main site and skipped going to the other sites.

It's pretty amazing to see the place, it was built just over 800 years ago and was a thriving community at the time. The building itself used to have over 100 rooms!


I left the monument at the perfect time, when I arrived I was the only person there and a few other people showed up while I was wandering around. As I was heading out a school bus showed up full of kids on a field trip. The noise level increased dramatically!

I kept following the loop back to the main highway and the next stop was the Sunset Crater National Monument, a dormant volcano that exploded about 1000 years ago. It was pretty impressive to see the area, you came around a corner and all you could see was cinder cones in the distance and the big volcano itself. Immediately east of the volcano itself, the land to the north had a perfect slope facing south, southeast and what looked to be damn nice soil. I was thought it'd make a damn fine vineyard provided you could get enough water for irrigation. Some of my favourite wines are from the Naramata bench in the Okanagan, an area that had its soil deposited from volcanic activity and the minerals in the soil lend a very unique flavour to the wines.




At this time I really wanted that coffee so time to search it out. I hit Flagstaff quite quickly and immediately found a Starbucks for a muffin and a coffee. Ahhhhhhhhh relief.

Julie(my sister) had recommended I take the highway to Sedona out of Flagstaff. Stunning canyon with a crazy descent into it, and if I hadn't have come through on a weekend it would have been a blast to ride. As it was it was full of daytrippers and those pesky rental RV's. Average speed limit due to the curves was 35mph, however, we were lucky to hit 20mph... sigh

Oh well, it was still fun to ride and see, definitely have to make a trip back to explore it further. Looked to be good camping there too.

The town of Sedona is damn cute, and knows it! Very touristy but not overdone. They have some strict signage and building rules from what I could see. All the building are in the Adobe style and earth toned. The signs were also using typical southwest colours, even the McDonalds had to conform and was the Teal Arches.

Phoenix by this time was a couple hours away, time to get moving! As I descended out of the mountain plains into the valley that Phoenix is in the temperature started to rapidly increase, and when I hit the bottom of the valley as far as you could see were fields of Saguaro cactus's, the type the coyote was forever running into while chasing the road runner :)


Soon enough I arrived at Julie and Greg's place, sweaty, tired and in need of a shower.