Dreams, Moments, Travels
A short trip for sure, just downtown Phoenix, to be precise. The Heard Museum is a must-see for residents and tourists alike. Featuring one, if not the best, collections of Southwest Native American Art on earth, a visit to the Southwest wouldn’t be complete without learning a little something about the art of ancient and contemporary Native Americans.
Thought I’d drive around the Phoenix area and share a random September day of what it looks like where Caroline and I live. If things look vacant, keep in mind that it’s Labor Day, so school is out, and many businesses are shut for the day. This view is from Scottsdale, looking over one of the many man-made lakes in our state, though this one is just aesthetics and not water supply.
From the hills of Paradise Valley, we get a great view looking northeast towards Scottsdale and the McDowell Mountains in the distance.
Downtown Phoenix is a study in sterility devoid of the attributes that engage a population and make it a desirable place to live, though city planners have been working on changing that equation.
Architecturally, there is very little in the Central Phoenix corridor that has historical reference since this has been a place constantly churning as it tries to reinvent itself. Plans from previous decades seem to have been designed to make Phoenix a place that flocks of people wouldn’t want to move to too quickly.
There are appealing-looking buildings along the way, but without a funkiness of cool places, a gentrified population that might afford a revitalized downtown core will not demand the kind of amenities that will attract creators, musicians, and freaks (I don’t mean junkies and meth heads, they are already here) that make a place hip like downtown L.A., San Francisco, or Seattle.
Broad streets are a perfect recipe for disaster unless you intend to feel like there’s no street life. Even when there are concerts or sporting events downtown, it doesn’t feel like meaningful other happenings are going on here; it only feels like it’s event-driven and temporary.
Whoever thought stadiums would be the big draw was smoking crack. Maybe another problem is that Phoenix and our surrounding communities simply do not like diversity but love conformity. Smart people move to Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Seattle, while economic desperation to escape a smaller town brings people to Arizona, where competition is not so cutthroat.
We have the potential to be a cool place (well, HOT in the summer), but our politicians and leaders are isolated in wealthy enclaves and are afraid of alternative cultures.
Our great new Burton Barr Library, while being a great resource has also become a favorite cooling-off location for the multitudes of homeless that are scattered throughout Central Phoenix.
Getting into the suburbs of Phoenix, such as here in Glendale, we have a bit more of a quaint kind of old-town feel but still nothing for young people or those looking for diversity.
We have the new Tempe Town Lake that, if I’m not mistaken, will be surrounded by overpriced real estate that will do nothing to bring a new focal point to the region.
Arizona State University should be a natural place to find alt-culture, right? You’d be wrong. This is a partying school that doesn’t produce genius entrepreneurs like Stanford over in California or science prodigies as M.I.T. does in Boston. Nope, this is ASU, and while Caroline and I have been to several events at the campus featuring ethnically diverse performances (that are free for students), we very rarely, if ever, see students attending (unless enticed by extra credit). Why not, you might ask? Because they are over on Mill Avenue drinking.
Old Town Scottsdale, because we know how to draw in the old retiree who is looking for expensive western art for their Cape Cod estate.
So if you are looking for cactus tchotchkes for your grandkids, $10,000 sculptures, or a place to not have to see one immigrant or person of color this is your kind of place.
The Borgata is another high-end shopping center you never knew we needed. Doesn’t seem like anyone else knows we need it either because while I come here for lunch occasionally, I seem to be one of 10 people a day who visits.
The Scottsdale Airport is surrounded by office parks and a couple of resorts. Kind of boring out this way; oh wait, that’s what I’ve been maintaining this entire blog entry. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful to live in Arizona. The blue skies and perfect weather are the main attractions, and there’s a certain logic to living somewhere so boring that it makes everywhere else you go seem all the more amazing. When I was growing up in L.A. I thought that the city was boring and yet I never felt I needed to go anywhere else. In Phoenix, I’m always looking forward to where we might travel to.
Everyone should have the opportunity to drive into Monument Valley early in the morning because this place is simply otherworldly.
Photos cannot share the scale or sense of being at a place like a visit can. While these quick weekend jaunts might see us effectively speeding through our environment, we are always thinking that it is better to have fleeting moments of these places than to stay at home to see yet another match between some sports teams that have no relationship to our sense of aesthetic reality.
There’s a small sense of tragedy here when one thinks about how these monoliths stand above the floor of the valley due to everything that has fallen away and then realizes how, at some point, they will be gone forever. Fortunately, that won’t happen in our lifetimes or for many lifetimes to come.
I’ve been near this location before, and I’ll return in the years to come, but never have I seen this rock lit in just this way that it was so easy to see a face.
After a couple of hours in Monument Valley, we drove south towards Kayenta, stopping for lunch at the Golden Sands Cafe (now closed) and then onto Road 98 towards Page and Lake Powell. You might notice that the lake is full!
Because “Nice Indians” are way better to shop with for Indian tchotchkes than angry ones.
That’s the Little Colorado Canyon out there. It joins the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, which is where we are going.
We are stopping in the Grand Canyon National Park because we can. It might be a bit out of the way if what we want to do is get home early, but as I said before, we’d rather collect these impressions and know that we’ve used our time to the best of our ability. This is the Desert View Watchtower, designed by Mary Colter and built in 1932.
Needed at least one obligatory scenic view of the Canyon.
And, of course one of us in front of it too. We made it to Hopi House over by the El Tovar Hotel in Grand Canyon Village before pointing the car south for our four-hour drive home. Must have been about midnight when we finally got home, but not bad that we were able to visit Sunset Crater, Wupatki, Navajo National Monument, Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, and the Grand Canyon all in one weekend.
We drive north out of Phoenix and, in a couple of hours, are passing Flagstaff. Just a wee bit further north, we turn right towards Sunset Crater National Monument where the road leads us right to Wupatki National Monument. This is not our first visit here; it won’t be our last.
On Highway 160 into the Navajo and Hopi Reservations, the stark landscape has a prehistoric beauty that, while visually appealing, seems difficult to tame for comfortable living.
These are the Elephant’s Feet near Tonalea on the Navajo Trail. We are driving northeast.
Looking into the Navajo National Monument and making note that we need to schedule a hike to the Betatakin alcove and ruins (pictured), which is a five-mile round trip. Equally as important but more strenuous is the 17-mile round trip hike to Keet Seel that requires a permit. Camping permits for overnight stays in the area are also available.
It’s 4:00 p.m. as we leave Kayenta, Arizona, and stop for this photo near milepost 398 on Highway 163. Not making great time, but we love the sights, so we’ll get to our destination when we do, and that will be fine.
Monument Valley and some asses come into view as we approach the Utah border here in northern Arizona.
Tomorrow, we’ll enter Monument Valley, but it’s getting late for where we are planning to spend the night, so we need to keep going.
We are peeking into Valley of the Gods here in Utah before checking into the Mexican Hat Lodge.
With so much light of the day still available, we opted to drive up to Bluff, Utah. In addition to Navajo rugs, pottery, and jewelry, the Cow Canyon Trading Post has a restaurant that we ate at the year before while my mother-in-law Jutta was visiting us. We stopped in just for the photo today because the last time we were here, I forgot to snap an image for a reminder of exactly where we sat for a perfectly wonderful dinner at a place that surpassed all of our expectations for being so far off the beaten path.
We had to skip dinner at Cow Canyon for the selfish reason that I was not going to miss having steak here at the Mexican Hat Lodge, which is also known as “Home of the Swinging Steak.” Live music, wandering dogs, coyotes howling in the distance, an occasional car passing by, and a lot of stars here in the Valley of Gods are the perfect companions for a night away from it all.
The one and only, the iconic, the legend: Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe in Phoenix, Arizona.
There’s no place else in the entire state of Arizona to get soul food like this soul food.
Last week, we passed through Wickenburg and drove right past the Hassayampa River Preserve, but we can only do that so many times to a place before we finally decide that we have to pay it a visit, and so that’s our first stop today.
It’s a pretty little oasis here at the Hassayampa.
Somewhere between Nothing and Hope, you’ll find Aguila, and unless you are a desert farmer or just someone interested in what stuff and which places are out beyond our purview from the freeways, I have no idea what you’d be doing out here.
Horse tie-ups still in place. I guess that says something about how long this former establishment has been in ruin. Roadside in Salome, Arizona.
Kinda neat little place along the road called the “Old Brayton Ghost Town & Museum.” To visit it, you are put on the honor system, and it is hoped you’ll offer $1 per adult and 50 cents per child to help keep things going. Our loop today is now traveling through Bouse, Arizona.
Parker Dam on the California-Arizona border.
London Bridge, originally built in 1830, is now about 5,459 miles (8.844 km) from where it first spanned the Thames River. Today, it spans a small channel of the Colorado River to an island that came into being as the Parker Dam backed up the Colorado, forming Lake Havasu.
Sadly, we drove right by the Silver Dollar Chuck Wagon restaurant in Topock, Arizona, missing a “broasted chicken” dinner, but we’d just eaten an hour earlier in Lake Havasu. This is old Route 66, which at one time was the main road across the United States for those heading west. Somehow, I can’t imagine being out here in the 1930s in cars without air conditioning and services that were few and far between.
For those who took this road some 70 years ago out of Chicago and before the age of television, how foreign and exotic must this have looked to them?
In 1921, much of Oatman burned down, but the Durlin Hotel survived (not pictured). Besides having a population as large as 3,500 due to a gold find back in 1915, Oatman was put on the map after Carole Lombard and Clark Gable got married nearby in Kingman on March 18, 1939, and passed through on their honeymoon. Clark Gable enjoyed the town so much that he would frequently return to play poker with the local miners.
For that authentic Old West look, there should be donkeys everywhere in Arizona.
We are in Kingman and probably not where Clark Gable and his new bride Carole Lombard had dinner (nor did we), but we definitely like the old sign.
And this was the big payoff of the day, a spectacular sunset with crepuscular rays.
Last remnants of the golden fires of the late-day sky as we drive south back towards Wickenburg and Phoenix.
Would this be the last monsoon of the summer season near Phoenix?