Egy arizonai utleiras angolul:
Spring is a good time to go; you leave Canada’s extended winter behind and arrive into a perfect summer.
On Good Friday our flight from Ottawa connected via Detroit, where a regular snowstorm was brewing, delaying our departure by 2 hours and undoubtedly making the search for Easter eggs difficult there on Sunday.
Arriving Friday evening at Phoenix involved picking up our rental car first at Avis. It turned out to be a Ford Mustang. This normally is a satisfactory vehicle, until I saw the many Solstices lined up (GM’s answer to Mazda Miata). A car with top down is the ideal car to drive out into the warm night, but of course people smarter than me reserved all these beforehand.
You get the feeling of free spirit soon. Next day, (Easter Saturday) on a rural road leading to Casa Grande (an old native building relic off the road to Tucson), I see in the rearview mirror a few Harleys, the hair of riders and passengers flowing in the warm air, no helmet law in this (and apparently 27 other) state.
We stayed at a resort (www.westwardlook.com) in Tucson for 3 nights. Since we do not golf, we made use of the pools, played tennis and went every day on long walks.
The scenery is beautiful with all the desert vegetation, cacti and other succulents abound. It is important to note that around Tucson (and Phoenix) there are mountains. The lower slopes (where there is never a danger of frost) are full with the saguaro cacti, often used as the symbol for Mexico (and Arizona). There are forests of these sprinkled with varieties of other cacti, some resembling unexploded bombs halfway in the ground, others in full bloom, all very happy about their whereabouts.
After Tucson we drove north, back to Phoenix for two nights. Most people from the US and Canada come to Phoenix to spend the winter here and play golf. The large number effluent retirees have given extra wealth that is evidenced by luxurious neighborhoods (like Paradise Valley and especially Scottsdale).
This is what is worthwhile to explore, the pueblo (Mexican, adobe) style architecture:
Low rise, red clay covered walls, flat roof in the midst of beautifully landscaped desert like gardens.
Another sight at the edge of the city is Taliesin West (www.franklloydwright.org); a Frank Lloyd Wright (most famous American architect) designed building. He came here in his old age to avoid the Chicago winters and founded this architectural colony/university.
Just like in Tucson there are mountains in Phoenix rising right in town. The Camelback and Piestewa are the best known. The latter we climbed, it is popular so you do this with hundreds of others, a 2.5-mile returns hike with a 300-meter elevation change for a wonderful view of Phoenix.
Downtown Phoenix itself is quite ho-hum, a few tall buildings, a big sports stadium with retractable roof and a public tramway being constructed and close to its completion, really there is not much to see. But go visit Scottsdale where the action is and see luxury shops of all kinds, visit restaurants and wine bars.
One night we had reservation to eat out in a restaurant operated by the Arizona Culinary Art Institute, where the future chefs are trained. Enthusiastic students supervised by their professors served an excellent five-course meal at probably half the price it would take elsewhere.
The other night we went to Kaz’s wine bar in Scottsdale www.kazbar.net, named after its owner, Kazimierz, a Polish émigré. It is tricky to find Kaz, no sign and the entrance is from the back alley, but once inside you realize how serious a wine sampling place it is.
The book listing wines is the biggest I’ve ever seen. There seems to be no particular order of listing them though…it is not by country nor variety or price. Talking price, some are well over $500 a bottle. Not only the wines but also food is also excellent, the Mediterranean salad/cold cut plate was as perfect as it might be in Greece/Italy.
I noticed that the young waitresses also sample the wines frequently, to make sure quality is not compromised I presume…or just as an occupational benefit.
After Phoenix we drove further North to Sedona for three days. Sedona is a scenic town closer to the Grand Canyon. The elevation is higher here thus nights are cooler but daytime temperatures are pleasant. The attraction is the many red colored sandstone mountains and canyons. It is a place where first artists started to settle down. By now it has grown into an effluent retirement town resulting sky-high real estate prices. Tourists are everywhere. Most of the tourists mill around the center to see the gift shops, or pack onto jeeps driven by guides and head out to see the red mountains. We however (and plenty of others) walked; there are a rich variety of trails for every age/skill group. Many others use mountain bikes or horses, another perfect way to see and get exercise. The marking of the trails could be clearer…it happened that I thought we were on one trail when in fact it was another. Alas this drew disproval of my traveling companion/wife Maria; “you should have looked better/asked earlier” she’d point out.
We stayed in the Briar Patch Inn, www.briarpatchinn.com in the Oak Creek Canyon. We had our own chalet with a fireplace and supply of wood every day for the morning fire. Breakfast was phenomenal; a walk simply had to follow it. For supper we barbecued steak and ate food bought in one of the delicatessens in town.
The highlight of our trip was the two days we spent at the Grand Canyon. The closest to us was the South Rim; the North side was closed for the winter it opens only in May.
Here the elevation is 2300m, you see spots of snow, and the top of the trails leading down to the canyon is covered with old ice (and mule shit).
The cool way to go down to the bottom is on hired mule caravans that have to be reserved well ahead. Maria has vetoed this as a dangerous exercise, but as soon as she saw the mules and the trail she has changed her mind, but it was too late by then. All the mules going to the bottom were booked and we had our two days paid in the fancy El Tovar hotel. So we trekked down one morning on the famed Bright Angel Trail to the mile and a half turnaround, an unforgettable track with an approx 300m drop. The total to the river is 10 miles, a 1,200m drop and a 4-hour trip, plus back another 8 hrs a major effort not recommended to be done in one day.
A sleepover at the bottom (Phantom Ranch refuge or at the nearby camping) is the best way to go all the way and back.
There are many other trails, easy but pretty ones along the rim or going down here and there, an ideal place for an inverse mountain hiking vacation, here you go first down then just remember you must come back up.
Following the canyon we drove northeast to Monument Valley. The place snagged its fame via the cowboy movies, the local trader Goulding convinced Hollywood director John Ford at the height of the recession to film his films here, and John Wayne became famous here riding his horses chasing Indians and bad guys.
The motel (http://www.gouldings.com) had free screening of his movies at 9pm, and windows of rooms looked out at the strange sandstone formations that dot this vast plateau. You have the feeling of being at the end of the world. We signed up for a full day of backcountry drive with a guide cw a barbecue lunch. A lot of the guests are from Europe or are lovers of horses; the sandy terrain is ideal to ride them. This area is in the midst of a huge Navajo Indian reservation, so buy your tequila beforehand, alcohol is not sold/served.
On the plus side it is a good place to buy Navajo carpets, jewels or woodcarvings, they make beautiful products.
The last leg of our Arizona journey was driving East to the Canyon de Chelly, a smaller but spectacular canyon on the border with New Mexico, then back west and spending two days in Winslow AZ. Winslow is a charming railway town with no more then 10 000 inhabitants. The famed Hwy 66 used to go through but the 1974 Eagles hit song: “Take It Easy” made it well known. The lyric goes:
Well, I'm a standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
and such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin' down to take a look at me.
The corner is there.
We stayed in the renowned Posada Hotel http://www.laposada.org.
This hacienda style hotel is the other star attraction. It was designed by architect Mary Colter (she also designed the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon) in the early 1900s, for the railway and stands right by it. It is not expensive at all, has an excellent restaurant, is full of antics and art, has nice gardens and you can sit in the easy chair outside to see the trains go by, on the famous Santa Fe line. Trains come every 10 minutes or so. Each is pulled by four thundering diesel engines. They are at least a mile long; full of containers with inscriptions of Hyundai, China Link etc…you get the idea where trade is coming from. At night around 8 pm Amtrak’s South West Chief stops for two minutes, the famous Chicago-Los Angeles passenger train, bi-level silver cars, restaurant car, etc. very romantic. It will arrive the following morning in LA; the total uninterrupted trip is 43 hrs.
From here we made a day tour to visit the Hopi Indian mesas, a 100k drive north.
The Hopi are the oldest remaining Indian tribe. The people are small, like to live on the top of mesas (flat topped sandstone mountains that is found in the area). Their villages high up resemble Tibetan settlements, complete with stray but friendly dogs. You can’t just go in, have to pay a guide, cannot make photographs and it is customary to buy one of their arts: the Kachina dolls, woodcarvings that are sold everywhere on village corners. Their living conditions resemble the third world.
The last two days (Saturday and Sunday) we spent in Phoenix in the Hermosa Inn (www.hermosainn.com) located in the midst of the rich residential suburb of Paradise Valley. It is a historic place, now converted into a boutique Hotel. It has beautiful desert landscaped grounds, a pool and only 34 units each with its own gas fired fireplace and patio.
Its restaurant, called the LON is famed and big. Saturday evening we ate there, as guests we got in without reservation. There are hundreds of tables inside and in a huge garden where a pit fire burns and you dine under the stars looking over the moonlit Camelback Mountain. The temperature is just perfect no humidity or bugs.
Clients are the many prosperous locals, a valet grabs their cars, Porsches are parked closer by, and let’s just say that you do not see evidence of any negative impact caused by higher world food prices.
SL
April 16, 2008
