The Next Chapter in the Book . . .: Chapter 231: Arizona Trip, Part One

Editor's Note: This is not a duplicate blog. The previous blog was a misfire and was sent out before it was edited or completed. This is the finished product.

As I went through my Arizona pictures, I realized I have a TON of them. 689 to be exact. These photos show how much I love pretty rocks, lighting and cactus. But as a good friend, Matt Hagen once said "Pixels is cheap, use lots of 'em."

And so I did.

I don't expect you to look at every picture in this blog. It's the modern equivalent of making people look at your vacation slides. I'm also organizing them for myself for future reference and the comments are brief since there are a lot of photos. So before you lose interest, I want to thank Mary and Dave (Ryan's parents)

for a wonderful visit and providing a great B and B (amazingly, this is their backyard),

tour service,

and entertainment.

Fun was had by all! We'll be back.

Now, as I sort through my pictures I see they are not in any sort of order since I used my phone for both pictures and panorama photos, and camera and all the file numbers mixed together. I didn't think about sorting by date until I had already done quite a bit of organizing and so you are being presented with the randomness of my mind as well as the random photo numbers.

Scroll through and check out what interests you...I will tell you right up front there are lots of pictures of rocks. But since it's my vacation blog and I like rocks, there will be rocks. For this I will not apologize.

We left the house in the early morning to catch our plane. The right lights had been turned on, stuff unplugged, and the cat's entertainment left in readiness. Here we go.

We arrived in Phoenix then drove up to Holbrook, AZ, home of the Wigwam Motel. In the Cars movie, these are the inspiration for the traffic cone motel. No, this is not my car but one of their props. Sure looks like it though.

Here's our little home for the night. It's an absolutely wonderful piece of Route 66 Americana built in 1940. They are made out of concrete and are actually a National Park.

The view of the office from our doorway...

...our little octagonal room complete with original hand built furniture...

...and tiny strangely shaped shower.

This is the office area. It used to be a gas station and the little wigwams on either side of the office were the restrooms for weary travelers.

Another odd roadside attraction is this rock shop with dinosaurs along the road. And by dinosaurs, I mean the prehistoric kind, not the one in the foreground.

What the heck is going on here?

After a day of driving, wigwamming and dinosaur spotting, we went to dinner at one of the only restaurants in town. Poor Holbrook really suffered when the modern new freeway bypassed old Route 66.

I'm glad Kyanne wasn't with us since the restaurant had red neon lights inside and it was kind of freaky. But it was another very cool piece Americana. With the steer horns between each booth viking-style pictures were a necessity.

Next stop: Winslow, Arizona. You can't roll into Winslow, AZ without blasting the Eagles "Take it Easy" song on the phone speaker placed on the dashboard for just this purpose. Failing this, the gift store on the corner plays it all day long as well. How can the shop owner stand it???

The tourist picture of "the" street corner in Winslow. The building behind the corner burned down so there is a mural painted on the remaining wall for pictures.

There is a cool old flat bed Ford parked on the corner for tourist satisfaction. There is a picture of a reflection of the truck with a girl in it painted on the wall to bring the song lyric "There's a girl my Lord in a flat-bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me." to life.

Wigwam Motel? Check. Winslow, Arizona? Check. Next? Sedona. Although it's a warm day, there are visible signs that things haven't always been this comfy.

As we roll into Sedona Cathedral Rock welcomes us.

We do a crash tour of the pretty little town because we have a train to catch.

You know you are in a city that caters to the wealthy when there are AED boxes on each block along the main highway.

Sedona's reputation for beauty is not over-rated. Isn't it pretty?

After our crash tour we head out through the beautiful country and catch our train.

We took the Verde Canyon Railroad tour train and it was a wonderful trip with beautiful scenery. I heartily recommend taking this trip if you are ever in the area.

Seeing the beauty of the Red Rock Country while riding in comfort with a snack buffet and drinking champagne...it doesn't get better than that.

The following are photos from the train trip.

This is the slag pile from the local copper mines. It's acres and acres huge.

Back in the day, the molten slag was poured out after the copper was extracted. A wall built from corrugated steel confined the molten slag. The white you see is oxidation on the copper that wasn't extracted with the old foundry method. With modern techniques, millions of dollars can be reclaimed from these tailings and this process just began a few months ago.

This is an ancient Indian cliff dwelling. You can see the walls have been fortified with man-made bricks and there are smoke stains still on the ceiling of the cave.

What kind of stresses must the earth have been under to create vertical breaks in the crust like this?

This looks like rocks along a path at Disneyland but it's 100% natural.

Our train disappears into a tunnel.

I surprised Bob by taking his pic in the total darkness of the tunnel. One guess as to his first comment after I did this.

Perkinsville is where our train turns around. The Perkins' settled one of the first cattle ranches and is still held by the same family all these years later.