Our trip to Arizona

Arizona is an amazing place. Anytime that I remove myself from my own rut it provides a way to appreciate my own rut and the world around me. We planned our trip this year so there would not be much stress flying, so we flew from Crescent City to our destination, Phoenix.

It was a beautiful clear day when we left CC. Castle Island was stunning in its beauty and wildness. I felt pretty safe flying as there was a Father and a Friar on the plane. I figured anytime you’re flying with guys that wear their collars backwards it’s pretty safe.

It was a pretty uneventful flight to San Francisco except for the fact that the closer we got to SF the cloudier it became, but really, I guess that’s pretty much the best thing to ask for if you’re flying. FYI. The onboard coffee on United was kind of like Peet’s Coffee, except with a little ‘p’ and without the t and s.

As we were arriving and leaving SF I waved and yelled “hello" out the window to Glenda, but I don’t think she heard me. We tried to take the hypotenuse to Phoenix even though our itinerary called for us to go to LA, but it didn’t work out. I even offered to surrender myself to the ticket counter in case anyone needed to be ‘bumped.’ I must have been in a bump-free environment as there was no need for anyone to be bumped. I HAD to ask, as this year I was flying for being ‘bumped’ last year. I had told Sandi that I was going to do it if the offer presented itself. Last year after being bumped I arrived a half-hour after Sandi, but with a $600 voucher in my hand. Actually, I’m pretty easy, I’d really do it for even half of that, but I didn’t tell them that.

Lucky for us, Sandi chose a hotel that provided a shuttle, so all that we had to do once we got to the airport was find each other. It took us about 40 minutes to do that. She was in one terminal and I was in the wrong one. Getting to the hotel took about 5 minutes.

It was so nice at the hotel that we decided to stay another day instead of taking off as we had planned. Our big venture of the day was going back to the airport and getting the rental car. Lucky for us the shuttle took us right to the car rental facility. It was huge! It could have been taken for an airport terminal except for the fact they were so short on planes there.

We got out on the road and drove to Apache Junction, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any Apaches there. They must have had some other business to attend to. On the way back we did see a roadrunner of the Wily Coyote type, but no coyote. It was our first one and it was doing just what roadrunners are supposed to do; run across roads.

Driving around Phoenix isn’t as easy as I make it seem. Actually we had a hard time finding our way back to the hotel. We tried using the spiral method. When we got close we always seemed to be in the wrong lane with no off-ramps. There sure are a lot of police in Phoenix. I think I had almost all of them following us at some point or another. I even got out of the car to check and see if someone had put a bumper sticker on the bumper that said, ‘This is a stolen car.’

Also, there are a lot of motorcyclists in Arizona. Very few wear helmets. That tells me that either people are pretty stupid in Arizona or there is a really strong lobby from the morticians union to keep voting down helmet laws. I guess it makes for good business for them. We did some guys that kind of looked like ‘Hell’s Angels,’ but on closer inspection they may have been Hell’s Angels, but with a little ‘h.’

I think that they may be trying to encourage population growth is Arizona, possibly to take the place of the motorcyclists that don’t wear helmets. When we went into a drug store I saw an announcement that said, “Pregnancy Kits $2.” I don't even want to know.

The next morning we took off for Sedona and the famous Red Rocks. After driving for about an hour there still were no red rocks to be seen, we were still in Phoenix, but we had finally got out of sight of the hotel. It was good to get on the open road, but then we had to get off the road as I had to go to the bathroom. I thought about driving back to the hotel, but using what little was left of my better judgment, we didn’t. Instead we stopped at a place called Montezuma’s Castle. Montezuma didn’t really own the castle, nor did he ever stay there. It was an early Native American dwelling. In fact, Montezuma wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s eye at that point. It was abandoned before the Spaniards ever arrived in North America, so I’m really not sure why Montezuma gets his name plastered all over the directional signs, but whoever owned it lived in a pretty neat place even though it was all rock and under a cliff. You would think they would have nice bathrooms at a castle, but they didn’t.

Lucky for us, we had nowhere to go, and we weren’t in a hurry to get there, but we still drove 75 mph (the legal speed limit).

The next place that we passed through was a place called Red Rocks, aptly named, I might add. There are spires of, yes, entire mountains of red rocks, and stunning in their beauty at dawn and dusk and at all times in between. In less than a 40 square mile area there is an anomaly that stretches the imagination. Red rocks, yes, are easy to understand, but mountains that are red and vestiges of time, a revelation of the past, and a vision into the future are hard to comprehend. They are awe inspiring, a small snippet into what once was. They are, what some perceive to be, a sacred place, a place of power, but I don’t understand why, or exactly know what that means. But, I do know they are special for some reason, and I want to understand why.

Yes, we drove through Red Rock Canyon all too quick and had to come back to see it again. We had driven through the town of Sedona and had recognized it as a classic tourist town complete with what Sandi likes to call, too many gift stores selling “rubber tomahawks” made in Japan. We checked into a motel about 15 miles west of Sedona and after sitting at the pool for two hours and watching the evening colors starting to materialize on the distant mountains were compelled to put the top down on the car we rented and drive back to the red mountains. I cannot describe the view, but suffice it to say we were not disappointed in the show that the evening gave us privy to.

As we were driving through all of these small towns we were trying to come up with creative ways to move down here and make a living. As we were driving through the town of Passmore we hit upon the idea, we would buy an existing business. What better way to start out than to buy a booming business? The idea was cemented when we saw that the business, ‘Passmore Gas and Propane’ was for sale. We’ll make an offer next week.

Our next stop was visiting friends in the town of Quartzite, a modern boom town that boasts too many people vying for too much desert space, but yet does it year after year with ‘snow birds’ from the colder climes. We were introduced to the desert with the exclamation, “Don’t worry, we only have six types of rattlesnakes here.” To my way of thinking that is only about seven too many. My goal was to find a real crystal and avoid all the rattlesnakes. Lucky for me, that’s what I did. Sandi loves the desert as it reminds her of her early Pathfinder trips to the desert from her childhood home in Ojai. She also loves the Saguro cactus and we were afraid that there may not be any there. We were pleasantly surprised. While driving out into the desert we were offered the opportunity to use walking / snake prodding sticks. I took the longest one that they had. I figured that if I did see a snake I could use it as a prodding stick / pole vaulting stick to put as much distance between myself and a snake as possible just before I ran as far away as fast as possible.

It was a successful desert venture, we didn’t see any snakes and we did find some crystals. That’s right, real live crystals just lying on the ground, probably lying there for millions of years, or a least since the last windstorm, but having taken millions of years to form. To pick one of these off the ground gave me a true sense of my microcosmic time frame in the ‘big picture’ of things.

The next day found us driving back to the spiral called Phoenix. We had managed to get away only to find ourselves having to return to the ashes of the past. We thought we had burned this memory, but now it was rising again, just like the Phoenix of myth.

We were able to make connections with Kara, and her two boys, Shawn and Andre. They were nice enough to come to our hotel and enjoy a few hours with us. Susie can be proud of her daughter and grandsons. She is doing very well and they are all adapting to the big move that they made last fall. Kara loves her job and the boys are enjoying the change that they have made. They both are playing baseball and, in addition, Andre is in band.

When we went through Airport Security, Sandi got through no problem, but I was detained. It seems as if they don’t allow certain kinds of canned cactus jam and pepper jelly through airport security, especially if they’re in eight ounce glass jars. Great, now I’m probably on the Terrorist Watch List for trying to bring some contraband jam and jelly into California.

The return trip was, thankfully, pretty uneventful. No padres, friars, or fathers on the flight home, but we got home safe and sound anyway. The only memorable event was seeing our really short pilot on the return flight, but he made up for it by making the stewardess come back to where the passengers were seated and get a pillow for him to sit on.

If I’m a little pudgy the next time you see me you can blame it on our son Randy. When we arrived back home we discovered that he had taken back the exercise machine that he had stored here for the last two years. I was just getting ready to start using it too. Ask Dick if you don’t believe me. While he was here I even went out and wiped the off dust of it.

Jim