“Amazon just sent me an email saying the toilet isn’t being shipped.”
“What? Never?” I said sounding like the chorus from HMS Pinafore.
So there we were. Stuck waiting for a new porta potty that was never going to come. Layne’s faith in Amazon and corporate America took a hit but she rallied and ordered a Camco 41545 from Walmart.
“It will be here by Friday,” she said but I could hear the underlying lack of confidence. We have embraced parking lot pick ups and overnight delivery like articles of faith. Now we are coming to terms with supply chain corporate America. So we left Clarkdale for the day and drove GANNET2 to Flagstaff, by way of Oak Creek Canyon.
Sedona, the city with no there there lies half an hour from Kathy’s place and is the bottom end of a very nice scenic drive uphill to Flagstaff. Sedona is known for rocks and vortices of powerful spiritual energy. You go to Sedona and healing energy flows through you. Naturally it missed me but that was probably owing to stubborn lack of belief. They make some nice Thai food there I’m told.
It is a vortex of strip malls and gentrification and Air BnBs, as much as sixty percent of housing stock is up for short term rent I’m told. Arizona’s Governor took over local zoning, as in Florida, and abolished rental restrictions across the state. It’s rather reassuring in a backwards way to get out of the Keys and see the same old issues cropping up everywhere.
I remember Oak Creek Canyon from 1981 when I stumbled upon it as I made my way north from Nogales which was where I returned to the US after a couple of weeks riding my Vespa to Guadalajara from Texas. I was going to the Grand Canyon by way of Flagstaff. I recall a series of endless curves alongside a river in dappled sunlight where I could stop and jump in for a swim. To my 23 year old self it seemed like paradise. Todays reality is slightly different.
It’s still pretty but it is rather more organized. We have to get used to traveling in high season for the next few weeks. We usually find ourselves alone where we go but school is out and the wilderness rings to the cries of youthful enthusiasms these days. I wonder if summer seems as long to them as it did to me?
We were just passing through obviously and enjoyed the drive but there was quite a bit of traffic, mostly going downhill to Sedona. There are lots of turn outs to let faster traffic by but I can’t imagine driving this instead of I-17 for a commute.
I tried to show Layne Oak Creek Canyon a good few years ago when we were around Flagstaff one winter for reasons I cannot recall. It started snowing and the top of the canyon had some snow on the ground but I figured what the hell and we took the plunge. We didn’t get far. I remember turning around but Layne tells a story that a woman in a car in front of us couldn’t get her car turned around and I had to drive it out of the snow and set her back on course. I have no memory of that incident at all. Perhaps I am simply blocking it owing to my intense dislike of snow. So this was Laynes first time. Hip hip hooray.
One can hardly blame Arizona for repairing roads during the summer but it is a bit tedious. We later discovered on our way back down miles and miles of Interstate 17 have been reduced to one lane in expectation of roadwork that shows no sign of being done at all. I wish I knew why they block ten miles of road and are barely starting to mill the first mile. Apparently my fellow drivers don’t know why either and impatience is evident. People complain a lot about gas prices but I don’t see a widespread move to slow down. I suppose gas prices for the middle classe are just another reason to moan. Practicing c9nsefvation is not part of their response. I do like being retired. Very much.
In her research Layne had found a previously unknown to us national monument called Walnut Canyon slightly east of Flagstaff. There is a tree in this area that is known as a walnut as it produces apparently something similar to what we think of as a walnut and so the area got its name. It seems that a thousand or more years ago a native people know nowadays by the Spanish words for “no water” chose to live in the canyon. The Sanagua left the area around 1250 and the evidence seems to indicate the climate grew colder and the fields the6 cultivated along the rim weren’t producing. But for several centuries these ancestors of the modern Hopi lived what can only be described to my mind as an idyllic life in Walnut Canyon.
Naturally the first outsiders to locate the canyon indulged in the best practices of the 1880s and dynamited the Pueblo and tore open walls in the hunt for souvenirs, which you may be surprised to learn is not how the modern parks service approaches modern conservation! Common sense is the rule for visitors. Don’t touch anything human made, stay on the superbly paved trails and for the love of God take water. They keep asking if you have water because apparently some numbskulls go down the canyon without and the climb out will get you sweating.
The park is actually quite brilliant and I highly recommend a visit. You can walk your dog on the rim trail which overlooks the canyon. The. You put Rusty in the van with the roof ac ready to keep him cool as the temperature rises - we arrived early and the van started out in the shade such is the excellent parking lot - and then you take a cou0le of hours to wander down and out.
It’s called “The Island Trail” because you descend a few hundred steps and take a one way walk around a spire of rock that rises out of the canyon floor. The trail illustrates the fauna on the north side of the “island” which is cooler in summer and the more cactus oriented vegetation on the warmer south facing cliff. By now the water supplying the canyon has been dammed off now is probably in sinks and fields across the state so the canyon floor, visible from a distance, is a carpet of grass only seasonally wet, but in winter the residents had a burbling brook at the base of the cliff residences in addition to other springs and pools.
As the parks service put it, this place is easily defensible and you get fair warning of people approaching. I wondered what it might b3 like living crammed in Manhattan- like appartamento but a ranger explained the layout this way, roughly. Most of the 250 dwellings were storage and only about 500 people lived in the canyon, figures they worked out from the debris and artifacts found in the canyon. So family groups might live in one cluster of caves and not be crowded on their neighbors.
Aside from the dog friendly attitude I really enjoyed the self walking aspect of the park. You go at your own pace and ponder and meditate where you want to stop. The place is amazingly evocative and you get a feel from want life must have been like in this strangely appealing place. There are lots of information boards in addition to the museum in the visitor center.
This is the island of rock rising up out of the canyon floor which visitors get to walk:
There is so much more to the canyon but the trail itself is barely a mile long.
The black smudges are from fires inside the dwelling.
The mortar with little white specks embedded is original material:
The clean yellowish mortar is recreated by the modern parks service:
We had an excellent time walking around and photographing and looking out across the canyon.
The climb back up was a pleasant series of staircase switch backs with occasional shade and benches to catch your breath. 6600 feet isn’t as high as we have been but in 100 degrees the altitude e affects some more than others.
Not everyone was as taken with the magnificence of the place:
Rusty was ready for some poking around the parking lot while Layne made lunch.
On the way back to Flagstaff we saw lots of dispersed camping possibilities in the woods as most of this is public land thus is quite amazingly available. There were also signs of people living by the side of the road. They reminded me of people living on boats at anchor off Key West, not sailors or boaters but just working poor keeping a toehold in paradise. I like traveling so I think of myself as a nomad rather than a parked van dweller. I’m not sure the workaday world notices the difference.
Stop!was the command from the navigator’s seat as Starbucks flashed into view. She got herself a green chai latte (I think that’s what it’s called) but hey gave it to her cold not hot. To her credit she came out smiling rough her mask and shrugged. Six months in Mexico have reduced her expectations of perfection. Long may it last.
Flagstaff is a pretty little town with a university and the usual accompanying bars restaurants and outdoorsy youngsters looking dressed for the wilderness.
We were headed down the hill on I-17 the free way reduced to one lane for miles because no road work was actually underway.
And so home. Thanks Amazon for giving us time to have a look around!
