I took this photo of my husband walking the dog in the snow last December at the KOA campground in Flagstaff, AZ. We were on our way to the Grand Canyon and camped here overnight. When we arrived the evening before, snow was falling; it continued overnight to add to the winter scenery. Click on the cropped image above to see the full-sized snowscape.
Damsel and I have been talking about a possible winter vacation. We enjoyed the last one we took when we visited the Grand Canyon and other interesting places in Arizona and California. We had the cold weather, but we didn’t seem to mind it. We kept warm and cozy and dressed for the weather.
We would like to go again, but don’t know exactly when and where. Just thinking about all the possibilities has given me terrible wanderlust. So many places would be suitable, but we can’t go everywhere.
Decisions, decisions.
Hopefully, we can see some scenery like in this photo Damsel took last winter while we were on the road from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon. The Canyon had four straight days of snow and drifts up to several feet high. There were icicles on the eaves of all the buildings and wherever they could form on the red rocks and in the trees. It was like living in a Christmas card.
It must have been that Global Warming that makes it cold some places. 😉
Back in the summer of 2008, Damsel and I went on vacation to Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. We visited several of the National Parks, including Bryce Canyon NP. At Bryce, the weather was nice, but a bit cloudy and overcast at times. Regardless of the weather, we enjoyed our stay at Bryce very much.
We were gawking and taking pictures of the canyon and all the colorful hoodoos that make this place so spectacular, when we encountered a nice gentleman who told us he had come here from Scotland. I asked him if they had anything like this in his home country.
Now, for his answer you have to imagine his voice, which I thought sounded a lot like Sean Connery in his role in the 1999 movie “Entrapment” as Scottish master thief Robert MacDougal :
“Aye,” he replied, “that we do. Almost every day, we have clouds.”
I wish I had taken a picture of his wide grin as he spoke.
Click on Damsel’s image of Bryce Canyon to enlarge.
This is the view of Dockweiler State Beach near Los Angeles International Airport. We were returning from a dental appointment on Friday and took this scenic route home. Click on the image to enlarge.
Last month, we went to Arizona, partly for a vacation and partly to look around the areas we visited for possible relocation. Our trip took us from the Phoenix area eastward toward Globe and then southward toward Willcox. From there, we drove to Tombstone, up through the Tuscon area and back toward Phoenix. Of course, we stayed at RV parks along the way.
This place, Marana, Arizona, came under consideration for a couple of reasons. We camped here for two nights just because there were so many vacation spots to visit in the area; Saguaro National Park and the Pima Air Museum, just to name a couple, but there are more. While we camped there, we found that we liked the area, the scenery, the climate and the people we met while we were there. Damsel likes the Wal-Mart just down Interstate 10 from here. I-10 is just a couple of blocks away from where we stayed, so getting to Phoenix or Tucson would be easy commutes, since Marana is between the two cities – albeit Marana is closer to Tucson.
We will probably return to our areas of interest in the dead of winter 2010 in order to scrutinize the climate at that time of year. We will post more about that later. Click on Damsel’s photo to enlarge.
Damsel took this shot from the Saguaro National Park (West), near the museum. I cropped it down to this panoramic image looking west from the park. We drove up from Tucson to visit the park, then on to Marana, where we stayed for a couple of days to relax and look around.
There certainly is some pretty scenery in Arizona. Click on the image to enlarge.
Other than a few anachronisms, this is pretty much how Allen Street looked in the days when Doc Holliday Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp got into it at the OK Corral, seen on the left. Click on the panorama below for a closer look.
Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday fought Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Claiborne, Ike Clanton, and Billy Clanton. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne (who later claimed that he had been unarmed, though some reports credit him with shooting one or more times) ran away from the fight, unharmed. Both McLaurys and Billy Clanton were killed; Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday were wounded.