Road Trip

My road trip with my sisters this past week was so much fun! We saw so many amazing things - and so many others that we still want to see... (road trip the sequel?)
I fell in love with Arizona all over again (or should I say for the first time?) ...I never thought it was pretty when I was a kid.

Background: My parents were both from Arizona. They moved to Utah when my dad decided to go to Utah State. He finished school and found employment here, and we have been here ever since.
The rest of both of their families stayed in Arizona, so all of our Summer vacations were spent there. My oldest sister was there in the Arizona days, so she was our link to that era.
I never lived there - but still have many memories of the place...

Anyway, the purpose of our trip was to attend the open house for the new LDS Temple in Central. (Dad's birthplace.)

We decided on the way down to stop and see some of the sights that we had always wanted to see. (Dad was always on a tight schedule to visit people "back in the day," so we never stopped to sight see.)

We stopped at Camp Verde - a military outpost from the 1800's. It's a museum now, and was an interesting place - lots to see, and the views were so incredible - Beautiful country!

Camp Verde




Seriously the coolest headdress I have ever seen!


After that, we stopped at Montezuma's Castle. It was totally different than what I always imagined it would be.
They were cliff dwellings, in the most beautiful peaceful valley - I can understand why the residents stayed there for 300 years...
(Although how they got up there to build it boggles the mind!)

Motezuma's Castle




By the time we arrived in Central, it was dark - but we had to drive by the temple anyway... In fact, we got lost trying to circle it.
(*Hint - there is no road that goes around the temple - we ended up in some poor unsuspecting fellow's driveway.) Luckily, he was a very nice man, and we had a fun chat with him and his cat. :-)













The next day we did the temple tour. We met lots of nice people who were (almost) as excited to be there as we were.


As you can see, the weather wasn't very cooperative. The wind blew the whole time (no such thing as good hair days!) ...and it was COLD!
(Where do AZ natives keep the warm during the day?)

This was the view out of one of the windows at our hotel.
I had to get a picture because it just spoke to me of my dad - the Arizona cowboy.



We filled the rest of the day visiting museums, past homes, and cemeteries (sadly, that's where most of the relatives are now.)

It was fun to see that some of our old family photos were in the museum (which was in my sister's elementary school building.)
We have an aunt and uncle who are still living in the area, so we stopped to say "hi." They were in good shape, considering that he is 99 and she is 97!

The next day we drove up to Heber. We took a different route, so we were able to drive through Sunset Crater and walk around the Wupatki ruins.

For some reason I always thought Sunset Crater was a single crater created by a meteor. I wasn't even close. What it actually is, is a series of small volcanoes.

Sunset Crater













Ruins













Canyon













We drove around Heber while sis told us stories about that location. It was so nice to have her there to fill in the blanks from that time. I have a sister buried there.
We spent the night, then drove around Snowflake the following day.

There is a Temple there now too. (Amazing!) We found a helpful grounds maintenance person who took the only photo of the 3 of us together. :-)



We could easily have spent a couple more days, but it was time to get home.
It got dark around Kanab, and everyone was tired and quiet, so I asked my sis if she knew any good ghost stories.
That opened a whole can of worms that probably should have been left alone on a dark road in the middle of the night...

I'm getting to wordy and boring - long story short - I'm home again - and planning the next adventure...
.