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Day 3 of the Arizona Adventure
We started our morning in the Hualipai Lodge on Route 66 in Peach Springs.When we were walking in the hallway between the room and the lobby, we saw a Hualipai girl who must have been about 4 playing peekaboo with us. By the time we realized what she was up to, it was too late for us to play along, but we certainly wanted to.
Our rate for the night with the AAA discount was 89.95, and the total with tax was 99.95. As you can see from the pictures below, there isn't much else going on in Peach Springs. In fact, I would say that there isn't much reason to stay there unless you are going on a river trip. My cell phone was not able to get any signal at all in the area of the hotel.
If you would like to know more about staying in the hotel, you can see the rest of our review is on Page 2.
We set out eastbound on Route 66 and our first stop was at Grand Canyon Caverns. Tabitha had read about the stop in the AAA guide book, and I was really not interested in stopping. I had been into caves that were both "civilized" with lights, and more natural, and I figured that I had seen enough. We had driven by the entrance to the property for the GCC and it looked a lot like a typical tourist stop, complete with giant plaster dinosaurs. Definitely appeared to be a tourist trap straight from the cheesiest movie!
We agreed that we would just stop and check it out to see what it looked like. We wandered around the restaurant and gift shop a little, and I came to the realization that if we had come this far and Tabitha didn't get to see the cave, she might just regret it forever. After checking over a few postcards and information books, we decided it was definitely worth a closer look! So, we purchased our tickets and waited for the next tour. Our two tickets came to $28.71, and if you are not in AAA you should note that there is a $1 off coupon in the brochure that sits beside the register.
As our tour began, the guide told us that this cave was different because it was a dry cave. Only 3% of the world's caves are dry caves, she told us. Only a small percentage of those were available for public viewing, since the others are privately owned and often used for some particular purpose. This started to sound a little bit different from the caves that I had been in, since they were not dry caves. We got into the elevator and went down to the bottom to start the tour. The tour guide cued us to look down through the cracks of the elevator shaft to see how far down we would be going - she had a lot of hokey remarks and jokes, but still great information - like how there are stairs from a new york building fire escape available in case of emergency, but that she hopes to never have to use them! It was quite a ways down!
Since all caves are formed by underground water sources, most of them still have flowing water. It turns out that the water that formed this cave had dried up and left, so the conditions were quite different from wet caves. The temperature was still constant all year, but the humidity was extremely low. We took lots of pictures of the formations, and the lighting was very nice, with the occasional colored light bulb for extra effect.
Because the humidity is so low, the bacteria and fungus that cause decomposition and rot cannot survive. This makes the cave an effective place to preserve all sorts of things. During the cold war, the government decided that caves like this one should be supplied so that they could be used as fallout shelters. The tour guide pointed out that this strategy was more effective as a boost to public perception of safety than as an actual safe haven. Since the cave is so dry, it becomes inhospitable after a few hours of exposure. Yet, since most people didn't know that, it made them feel safe to know that there were lots of supplies in the cave. Those supplies are still present in the cave today, and I thought it was really interesting to see them there. The dark colored barrels are water, while the boxes are food and other supplies. By now I was convinced that I was wrong about my impressions of the cave, and was glad that we had stopped.
Our tour guide also added lots of information about the history of this particular cave, and how it came to be a tourist stop. The most interesting part about this entire discussion (at least to me) was how the first owner hired the crews that built the Hoover Dam to build some stairs for the cave. The result is stairs that were built out of the same wood that was used to support the forms in the construction of the dam. Also of interest was that the original owner actually believed the caves to be filled with diamonds as the sparkle of the quartz misled him, before the truth of his discovery was revealed, he had already bought up all of the surrounding land to lay claim to his fortune. Stories are that he also attempted other means of making money through mining the cave, but in the end, decided that tourism might be his best call. The original tours were conducted using rope to lower people down for a quarter with a lantern and then the owners would go out drinking and eventually return. Later, they updated their entrance with some very crooked, very steep steps that led into the caverns which meant they were no longer needed to help get explorers out... Another interesting discussion was about the animals in the cave. One was a bobcat who fell into the cave sometime around 1850. He crawled further into the cave and died, but because of the cave's harsh environment, he didn't decompose. Instead, he sort of mummified himself, which leaves him in great condition even now. The giant furry creature is a two-toed sloth from prehistoric times. She fell into the cave but didn't move herself away from the entrance. Since she was close to the entrance, she decomposed normally leaving behind bones. The tour guide says if the sloth had gone only ten more feet in any direction, she too would have been mummified. There are marks visible on the cave walls with one of her nails stuck in where they think she tried to climb her way out. Alas, they had nice bones which they donated to one of the universities. They traded the prehistoric remains for a modern-day replica.
When we got done with the tour we stopped briefly in front of the building for a few pictures. The tour guide told us that the movie Cars was about the bypass of Route 66 by I-40. Definitely a fun movie that we'll be adding onto NetFlix so that Jared can see it! I don't remember a fire-truck, but Radiator Springs was the name of the town in the movie. We paused briefly to look at the gas station, then it was back on the road for Seligman.
We stopped for lunch at the Roadkill Cafe. The food was reasonably priced, and of course the atmosphere was fun. I had a hamburger and TB had a patty melt. Both were above average and exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed the decor of the different rooms, including the only elk that I saw in AZ, albeit stuffed! A poster that appeared hand-drawn was what impressed me most. It was a map of the US with areas of the different native american tribes and their movement in the US, there were notes in a margin key that dated important moments in the history of rights for native american tribes. Very interesting and reason for pause. There was also some interesting taxidermy and of course the menu listed everything with a "roadkill" theme.
The rest of Seligman was also fun, since we got to see the make-believe old buildings. The old jail and old theater and on the way out of town there was a saloon type building with blow-up dolls and mannequins positioned on the second floor and at the entrance waving at the passers-by.
From Seligman we went on to Flagstaff. A friend of ours had given us a copy of the Arizona Highways magazine, and it was an issue dedicated to hiking trails. We had read about one called the inner basin trail, and even though the trail itself is longer than we wanted to hike, we still went to check out the area and hike for a small portion of it. We left the main road about 15 minutes north of Flagstaff, and started driving up the mountain on a very scenic dirt road. We both had lots of fun taking pictures of the same things and enjoying the very comfortable temperatures.
The drive on the Inner Basin Trail was quite impressive for the lookout point height advantage. Also, the trees were very nice with a birch-type tree (Marcie says Aspen) being very common, with leaves that would flicker in the wind - very beautiful, but hard to capture with still pictures. As it states in the article, the view within the basin, looking up toward "alp-like" mountains is the most impressive portion of the hike. It suggests to pack a lunch and enjoy it with the backdrop view. We didn't have lunch, but we did have fun taking quite a few pictures with an attempt at a reflection of the mountains in one of the onds. There were three hikes from the magazine that I tagged for us to do, this one for the view of the mountains, one for the myriad of different red rock attractions jam-packed into a quick and easy hike and the third within the vicinity of Sedona for water crossings and good reviews.
We left the Inner Basin trailhead and went south towards the Oak Creek Canyon. It was amazing to see the scenery change so much over such a short driving distance. We did not stop for the hike here, or really see signs for the hike, but we did enjoy an overlook point where we were able to get some pictures before descending into the valley to Sedona. The roads were intensely winding with lots of new lush vegetation. At the top we by-passed some souvenir stands and just enjoyed the view of the land.
When we left the Oak Creek Canyon overlook, we really started descending into the valley. The drive from oak creek to Sedona was very curvy, and before long we were starting to see the trademark red rock formations.
Our final hike from the magazine was the Fay Canyon trail near Sedona. It took us a little while to find this one, since the directions in the magazine left out a couple of steps. It turns out that we needed to go to a few more dead ends and make a few more left turns, but when we found it, it was obvious that we had. By this point, the climate and scenery were completely different from what we had seen before. The temperatures were more like the desert, and the loose red sand under our feet was nothing like the light gray dirt that we had seen near Flagstaff.
Here we are once we finally found the trailhead. This took a little bit of head-scratching and a few u-turns.
The hike had been fairly flat for the first few minutes, since the trail followed the bottom of the canyon. We had a good time taking pictures of the canyon walls as the sun sank lower in the sky. The riverbed at the bottom of the canyon was dry, but the bugs were still starting to come out for the evening feast. Tabitha had a good time with taking pictures through her sunglasses, and you can see them below.
The trail was supposedly marked with a cairn (small pile) of stones, but we didn't find this to be an entirely unambiguous marking system. We passed the main turn off and continued up the canyon floor and enjoyed the environment that was so different from home. Although, the color of the dirt sure did seem familiar! We still were able to catch a glimpse of a natural arch window-like in some of the rocks and it was a good quick hike with lots of new and different scenery. I was amazed at how red the canyons were and thoroughly disappointed with the images I was getting on my camera due to the lack of intense red colors. Then I realized that I was looking at the red rocks through rose-colored glasses, thus the attempt to add a red filter to my camera pictures to show this intensity they lacked without my sunglasses!
We went to what seemed like the end of the trail, and then started heading back. We found a few other hikers who explained the trail to us, and then we went back and found the correct path. The canyon featured an arch that was not readily visible from the main trail, so we figured it would be worth finding. This meant a little tricky footing to climb up the trail until we were under a natural bridge formed of the rock!
I was glad that the mosquitoes seemed to not come quite up to this elevation and the slight break allowed me to really enjoy the view! I tried to be more focused on the beauty of the hike on our way out rather than the pesky mozzies!
Here is the view of the arch from below. We also had a nice view of the canyon below.
As the sun got lower and the warm desert started to cool off, we went back to Sedona to rustle up some grub. We had read about a mexican place there called Oaxaca, so we parked there and walked around to see if we could find anything else that sounded more appealing. We didn't find anything else, so we ate there. The food was certainly good, but it was definitely a tier below Aunt Chiladas. We left Sedona around 9:30pm and went to PHX to get ready for our big day of motorcycling that followed. Sedona impressed me that all of the shops and even the Harley shop had these intense red rock mountains as their backdrop! Kinda like the Target in Asheville near the airport with a beautiful view of the blueridge mountains behind it! Something about it seems a little out of place, how ordinary places end up with such a commanding view of grand beauty!
Click Here for Part 4
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