Ruth and John's Travels: Arizona December 2013

The "Black Friday" spectacle in the Cedar City, UT Wal-Mart.
Kind of like 'Boxing Day' in Canada

Ruth at the north rim of the Grand Canyon

Fog spilling over the south rim and into the Grand Canyon

Grizzled John at the head of the 'Bright Angel' Trail

By morning light after a 'wild' camp between Page and Flagstaff, AZ, we saw that
we had camped on a pair of partly exhumed petrified logs in the Chinle formation.


Here, John is standing 30' away, at the top of the exposed log. There was very little taper in the log- the sides were almost parallel, suggesting the tree had been very tall. These pictures were the EPOD in late January 2014.

The red rock of the Schnebly Hill Formation at Sedona, Arizona

Ruth at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, with the southern part of Sedona behind her.
The vulgarly large house above her right shoulder was once owned by Nicholas Cage.
Or someone, anyways.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona.

Ruth is a long-time fan and admirer of Alice Cooper,
so in Phoenix, we made a pilgrimage to Cortez High School, the Almae Matres
of 'Alice' (Vincent Furnier), Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Glen Buxton ...

...and Camelback High school, of Neal Smith, the
original members of Alice Cooper, the band


Cooperstown, Alice Cooper's restaurant / bar in the heart of Phoenix's sport stadium district. Both the D'Backs and the Suns have their stadiums within a block or two.

The interior of Cooperstown, decorated with a mix of sports
and Alice Cooper 'shock rock' memorabilia.

Ed's model, made out of pop cans, of a John Deere Model 'D'

We went to Apache Junction, AZ, to visit Ruth's cousins Mary and Ed Podhorodeski
and got a feel for the snowbird lifestyle.

Ripening olives in a tree in a Tucson campground.

A Gambel's Quail in the Tucson campground

Ruth and a large Saguaro cactus.

The fruit of a Fishhook barrel cactus in downtown Tucson.

John chowing down surrounded by Poinsettias in the courtyard of
the Old Town Artisans in the Presidio in old town Tucson

John standing under a SR-71 the high altitude spy plane, in the
Pima Air and Space museum.
The yellow amphibian in the distance is a Grumman Widgeon.
The hump-back is a dead end design F-107a.
Suspended from the ceiling is a YO-3 'Quiet Star' designed for almost silent night observation.

A 'Super Guppy' at Pima

A B-47 StratoJet, a subsonic jet bomber of the 50s and early 60s

A Convair B-36 'Peacemaker' with 6 piston engines and 4 jet engines.
It was the first bomber designed to carry nuclear weapons.
There are still pieces of one on a mountain near Stewart, BC.

Nearly 750 B-52 Stratofortresses were built, but this one wasn't used for bombing runs.
Under the right wing is the cradle for the X-15, and the cuneiform on the fuselage is the tally of X-15 missions.
Horizontal silhouettes are for glide runs, vertical for powered.

The ugly but 'effective' A-10 ThunderBolt (aka Warthog) doing
touch-and-gos at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Tucson

Ruth standing by a moon rock in the Space Gallery at Pima,
brought back to earth by Apollo 17.

Entrance to the Pima Air and Space Museum

The gallows in the courtyard of the courthouse of Tombstone, AZ.
Yes, there are 13 winds in the rope, and there are 13 steps to the top.

Actors starting the re-enactment of the "Gunfight at the OK Corral" of 1881.
Tombstone was a notoriously wild and lawless mining boom town in the 1880s

Ruth under the canopy of the largest rosebush in the world.

Some local color in Big Nose Kate's Saloon in Tombstone.

One of the famous tombstones in the 'Boot Hill' Cemetery in Tombstone.
Most of the interees got planted in the wild 1880s, and few died a natural death.

Ruth entering Mexico at Nogales.

The Lykes House, considered to be the last building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

A much modified FLW house was owned by a prickly retired Marine.
He also has an cannon (yes, a cannon) in his front yard.

Frank Lloyd Wright set up a school / commune / workshop on the outskirts of Phoenix,
named Taliesin West (the original Taliesin was in Wisconsin).
This is one of the administration outbuildings at the complex.