Road Trips and Red Rocks
I'm back! We got home from the Epic Family Arizona Trip late Friday night, and I shall now present you with a condensed, hopefully entertaining version of events, complete with picspam. (What, you think I'd get a new camera and not subject you all to a picspam? You've got to be kidding. *grins*)
So. We left on Sunday morning, catching a hellishly early flight from Charlotte to Dallas, Texas, and then from Dallas to Phoenix, Arizona. I am ridiculous on plane rides, and spent almost the entire time with my nose pressed to the window like a little kid, checking out the oddly geometric crop patterns and irrigation rings from 37000 feet in the air. Phoenix itself freaked me out a little. It's a city in the middle of the desert, surrounded on all sides by sharp, vicious-looking mountains, and, well...I'm working on a poem about it, actually. More on that later.
We spent a day cruising through Sedona, checking out the red rocks and four-wheeling in a bright pink jeep. It was pretty hardcore. Irritatingly, the pictures do the scenery little justice. Have some anyway.
Lookit.
Gratuitous family snapshot.
Found this in one of the artsy districts. The shirt amused me endlessly, and I totally would have gotten it for fialleril’s Kitster if I could.
Ha, that breeze came by at the wrong time. I look like I’m either trying to be a hair-flipping supermodel or an alien here.
Chapel of the Holy Cross. It’s set right into the mountainside, and is immensely cool.
These signs were everywhere. Being a U2 fan, endless jokes resulted about what happens when you piss off our favorite beanie-wearing guitarist.
Okay, okay. So my favorite part of the entire trip was staying at a place called the Shooting Star Inn, a bed and breakfast out in the middle of nowhere and run by a guy who is my new hero for all times. Allow me to elaborate:
This is Tom Taylor, the fellow who runs the B and B. He is, among other things: a professional photographer, an astronomer, a musician, a sailor, a really excellent cook, and a storyteller. He is also brilliantly smart and very funny. You guys, I have never fangirled someone this hard in my life. I want to be him when I grow up, I think. *love* And yes, that is a telescope.
We got to go out for a star party one night, and spent an hour or two checking out constellations and galaxies, and my favorite thing of all, the moon. Now check this out - I took the picture above on my camera after Tom hooked it up directly to the telescope. It's much better when zoomed in upon on the camera itself -- you can see individual craters, even the shadows of the crater rims. *bounces gleefully* I was the happiest kid in the world. Seriously, how often do you find yourself out in 20-degree weather at one in the morning, trying to keep warm in an ancient Air Force parka and doing some astrophotography? It was so cool, you guys. So cool.
Anyway, the B and B was this beautiful log cabin that’s completely off the grid - it runs on solar power, and there are giant panels up in the yard and everything. Here’s the view from the porch.
Grace and I went wandering around as the sun went down the first night. High desert is the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. With the bleached grass and purple mountains in the background, it could easily be some part of savannah. It is painfully dry, but the air’s clear as glass, and elk and pronghorn and desert cottontails go traipsing by at a moment’s notice.
Tom was particularly awesome in that he let me borrow his fisheye lens when he found out that I had a new Nikon. (He’s a Nikon guy himself, apparently.) So I promptly took pictures of the whole house. Here’s the living room, plus an ancient telescope and a piano.
Look at all the tea. Is it any wonder why I love this guy? *grins*
That top floor/loft serves as the music room. The last night we were there, one of Tom’s musician friends came over and initiated a jam session, which the rest of us got pulled into. I found myself singing harmony to Coldplay’s “Yellow” and somehow got talked into playing drums, which I’ve never done before in my life. (It was terrifyingly complex, and I kind of failed at it, but I channeled my inner Larry Mullen and got into it after a while.)
We wound up driving out to Winslow, Arizona, to stand at the infamous corner mentioned in the Eagles song. (Take it easy, yo.)
Winslow’s a town that should have died a long time ago, and there’s nothing left in it but sad little souvenir shops, decaying houses, and drunk Indians. It creeped me out thoroughly, but the drive alone was worth it. Watching the terrain change every few miles was terribly cool, especially when accompanied by Peter Gabriel songs playing on the radio. I saw about a million dust devils, too.
Up next: the Grand Canyon! Unfortunately, like I said earlier, you can’t capture it properly in pictures. It is absolutely breathtaking in more ways than one.
Watching the sun go down.
There was…a tumbleweed incident on the way back towards civilization.
(They’re actually nasty, spiky little bastards. Tom accurately referred to them as demons -- this one tried to escape on the wind and cut up my hands.)
Back in Sedona for one last round of exploring before heading to the airport again. We stumbled across this ridiculous place called Ye Olde UFO Shoppe, staffed entirely by crystal-bedecked, caftan-wearing hippies. So of course we had to check it out. My sister wasn’t particularly amused by this weirdness. I, on the other hand, definitely was.
Some of the locals believe wholeheartedly in UFOs that apparently frequent the area, going so far as to trek out to vortex sites with little copper pyramid-hats on their heads and attempt to commune with their “space brothers.” (Insert multiple clone trooper jokes here, plz.)
I’ll let this speak for itself.
Hee. So, yeah, that was my spring break. It was pretty much a grade-A family vacation, in which many inside jokes were created, lulz were generated, and good times were had by all. I’m glad to be home again, but man, that was a really, really good trip. Hopefully I’ll get to go back soon.