10/11APR11 - Phoenix, AZ

Sunday, 10APR, we finally “escaped” from the snow of Flagstaff & drove south to northern Phoenix. Snow from yesterday’s snow storm was on the ground for half the drive south on I-17. We could see several places where people had ended up in the median ditch, & could understand why I-17 was closed for most of Saturday. Monday morning Dan started the day by washing one months worth of dust off the Toad, & then vacuuming the inside.

After lunch we head out to hunt down & photograph eccentric sites in the northern Phoenix area. Two unique things happened during this expedition. The first was at the “Sunnyslope Rock Garden” (aka Grover Cleveland Thompson Museum), 10023 N Thirteenth Pl, Phoenix, AZ, 85020, where we ran into Marion Blake.

Grover Cleveland Thompson built this rock garden in the Sunnyslope neighborhood of Phoenix, AZ, from 1952-1974. He began building when he retired here at the age of 65. Thompson was inspired by Petersen's Rock Garden in Bend, OR, which was near where he used to live. He used concrete, rocks, broken pottery, bottles, and other discarded objects to create sculptures and fountains. One of his favorite materials was Fiesta Ware. It seems that at one time the bright pigments used to color the classic dinnerware was radioactive! End result was many people thru their Fiesta Ware away & Thompson scooped it up. Thompson died in 1978 and the property has been cared for by a new owner, Marion Blake, since 1979.

Our intention upon finding the Rock Garden behind a locked fence, was to just get a few photos from the road. Ms Blake saw us & immediately invited us in for a private tour. She also was a wealth of information on Mr Thompson. Dan’s favorite rock “sculpture” was an eight foot high model of the Seattle Space Needle.

The second unique experience was at the site of a Paul Bunyan Muffler Man located in a residential neighborhood, where we discovered an entire yard of eccentric stuff. Dan even got invited inside by the owner Don Parks, & was overwhelmed by everything taking up every square inch of the house!

He bought his house in 1971 and started "decorating with junk." There are road signs, telephone booths, & fire hydrants. The statues include a lifesize elk, a Humpty Dumpty, a cowboy on horseback, & of course the Paul Bunyan Muffler Man we came to see. In fact, there is no more room in Mr Parks house & yard, so he bought the empty house across the road!

06-09APR11 - Flagstaff, AZ (various national monuments)

Upon arrival at Black Barts RV Park we headed to the Flagstaff Visitor Center. This is an excellent visitor center located in the restored Santa Fee RR station. Then it was off for a walk about Old Town. That evening we decided to have dinner at Brandy’s Bakery & Restaurant, which has been featured on Food TV. This is a small place located in an out of the way strip mall, nowhere near downtown. The Chef prepares only seven or eight entrees, all unique & very good! http://www.brandysrestaurant.com/ The next day, Thursday, 07APR, we headed to the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument; which is connected to the Wupatki National Monument by a scenic “loop” road through the Coconino National Forest & private property. As always our first stop was at the Visitor Center to get information on the park & view any displays or videos they have. The Sunset Crater center was unique in that they had a working seismograph & we could see the shockwaves from the quakes that had just happened that day in Japan & Baja Mexico. The Sunset Monument preserves one of the largest volcanic cinder cones in the USA, & the surrounding lava flows. Back in 1928 a film company wanted to dynamite the cinder cone so they could film the resulting avalanche! The resulting outcry by locals resulted in the creation of the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. One interesting fact was that from 1963-73 the surrounding lava fields were used to train Apollo astronauts for lunar operations.

The Wupatki National Monument contains the remnants of five Pueblos – Wukoki, Wupatki, Citadel, Lomaki, & Nalakihu. You can walk thru Wukoki & Wupatki; & Wupatki has a very detailed brochure explaining what archeologists & scientists believe the function(s) of the Pueblo was. Much of what occurred at these sites & what the day-to-day life of the inhabitants was will never be known because the early Native Americans had no written language. One interesting feature at Wupati was an oval walled pit, with entrances at each end, that apparently was used for “ball games”? At the Wukoki Pueblo Corrie had an up close & personal experience with a four foot gopher snake!

http://www.nps.gov/sucr/index.htm http://www.nps.gov/wupa/index.htm Later that afternoon Dan took off by himself to the Walnut Canyon National Monument. The canyon is over four hundred feet deep & is very beautiful in its own right. But the reason for the national monument is the remains of numerous Native American “cliff dwellings” built into the natural recesses of the canyon about one hundred feet below the canyon rim (sort of like single family housing?). Dan hiked the Island Trail which is a one mile loop around a pinnacle of rock that rises over three hundred feet from the canyon floor, also containing cliff dwellings. Even though the impending shut down of the federal gov’t was not certain & still two days away; the budget mess was already effecting National Park Service operations! Usually your entrance fee gets you seven days re-entry privileges; but since the Parks might be closed starting Saturday, they couldn’t guarantee you would get the “full value” of your entrance fee. So the Park Service decided to charge no entrance fees for Thursday & Friday. We wonder how much revenue was lost to the gov’t? Trivia – Pres Roosevelt disliked the Army designed uniforms for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), who did he pick to re-design the uniform?

http://www.nps.gov/waca/index.htm

Friday morning we woke up to a light, but constant, snowfall. We had planned on visiting the town of Sedona, AZ, & a few more National Monuments, but decided because of the weather to stick around Flagstaff. During the day Corrie managed a trip to the mall, & Dan went out to photograph eccentric sites.

We awoke Saturday morning, 09APR, to another snowfall & over a foot of snow on the ground & on the RV! Other than using the Toad for short errands we “hunkered down” inside the RV & watched the late winter storm outside our windows. At one point Dan climbed on top of the RV with a broom to remove over a foot of snow.

04/05APR11 - Holbrook, AZ (petrified forest national park)

Monday, 04APR, was a very scenic & leisurely drive on “old” US180 from Silver City, NM, to Holbrook, AZ. After checking into the RV park, it was off to Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Co. This is one of those “old fashioned” roadside attractions that lined the old two lane highways back in the day, trying to catch your eye & get you to stop; & as always in the back seat were several kids screaming “Can we stop?” “Can we stop?” Even though a tourist trap, some of the things made from petrified wood were extremely beautiful (if not very expensive)! http://www.petrifiedwoodco.com/

Upon returning to the RV Dan went on a photo hunt of eccentric sites in the Holbrook area. The “theme” for the area seems to be dinosaurs? Every business on the original alignment of Route 66 seems to have at least one, two, or more dinosaurs out front. One of the interesting ones, was very a detailed cast bronze dino made for someone in the Phoenix area for their pool area. Turns out the bronze casting was too heavy to lift over the house via crane! So the couple donated it to Holbrook.

Monday night we decided to have dinner at Butterfield Steakhouse on Route 66. This was a “theme” restaurant that was very common on Route 66 from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Every booth has displays of cowboys, Indians, lawmen, outlaws, etc, that supposedly roamed the local area back in the late 1800s. It was a very large restaurant with very few patrons when we were there; the steaks were good but not worth going out of your way for.

Tuesday, 05APR, we headed to the north entrance of the Petrified Forest National Park. Upon arrival at the Visitor Center we viewed the Park Service film & then started driving the park road to the south entrance, stopping at turn-outs to take in the views. The north portion of the park is primarily Painted Desert, & the south portion has significant deposits of petrified wood. While spending the day in the park we caught the Ranger led tour of the Puerco Pueblo & then rushed off to catch the Ranger led tour at the Painted Desert Inn, before driving the rest of the park road south to the Rainbow Forest Museum. Both of these tours were excellent & we highly recommend them if you are in the Park! To us the beautiful sights of the entire park along the 28 mile park drive were an unexpected surprise, & we highly recommended stopping by if you are anywhere close to the Park!

The Pueblo tour was extremely informative about a Pueblo that might have housed 1200 people; & had the added bonus of the Ranger pointing out Petroglyphs below the trail. The Painted Desert Inn was a “business venture” built by Herbert Lore out of slabs of petrified wood. Because Lore did not understand the instability of the ground he built on, the original Inn (aka Stone Tree House) was a maintenance nightmare! Eventually he sold the Inn to the Federal Gov’t; & in the late 1930s the CCC tried to stabilize the structure, while expanding it, & covering the petrified wood structure in a SW adobe style. In addition the CCC added some exquisite painted glass skylights. In the 1970s the Inn narrowly escaped demolition & now the Park Service is trying to extend the “uses” & open hours of the Inn for expanded use. Not to be missed in the Inn are the murals by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, from the late 1940s!


Trivia – what National Park has a portion devoted to Route 66? What was the first National Park that had a portion of its area designated National Wilderness? http://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm