Arizona was a Shocker – July 4, 2022, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Happy 4^th of July!  We arrived here 3 days ago, and it has not been under 103 yet.  Riding a motorcycle in Arizona in July was a stupid idea…honestly, who does this?  It is like riding on the sun.  I was not surprised that it was hot, but I don’t remember it being this hot any other time I have been here.  The surprise was the wind!  One of the rangers said there are no snow days here, but they do have wind days since they cannot operate the school busses when the winds are 50MPH+ and that they can get up to 80MPH.  Haboob anyone?  He warned us not to be in the canyons when the monsoons hit (every day between 12pm-5pm) since that was when there were many rockslides. 

Usually when I came here it was for work.  I flew in, went to the hotel, did whatever event or customer call I was there for, and flew home.  I had not really seen any of Arizona other that Camelback Mountain from a distance and drove through Sedona once.  When I though of AZ I always thought of a new, planned city where all the streets were square, and the rest was just sand.  This could not be farther from the truth about Arizona. 

I have to say, outside of the heat, I forget how beautiful it is here.  On our way here we drove past the Coconino National Forest.  It’s 1.8 million acres in northern Arizona that is almost exclusively pine.  As we drove it smelled like pine.  Sadly, we could see some of the damage to not only the pine forest but as we drove to the hillsides covered in cacti as well.  There were only skeletons of them left standing.

Our first stop was to see the Petrified Forest.  It’s the only forest I have seen where none of the trees are standing up and I was not expecting to see trees made of quartz.  It appears they have been cut but actually, when they start to stick out of the mountains, break when the sands move from under them.  They are beautiful.  It’s a smaller national park and only about 350 miles and I don’t remember hearing much about this as I think it is overshadowed by the Grand Canyon, but it was a worthy stop, and I am glad we got a few hours there before the rain chased us out

This national park is also home to the painted desert and rainbow mountains, and they are stunning.  It was time to dig out the drone!  Ron took a bunch of footage, but we aren’t going to post since it is very choppy so take a look at the photos instead.  The layers of colorful rock were caused by the movement of the tectonic plates and volcanos (which are no longer active).

Daughter #1 was the reason for our expedition to Phoenix.  She was the only one we had not seen in over 6 months, and it was way overdue.  The other reason is she has an upcoming job that starts in September in Spain so we wanted to get some time with her before she left not knowing what our schedule looked like.  We ended up staying on Phoenix over the holiday and due to the heat, talked her into going to Flagstaff with us for a few days the following week.  Since we had pushed hard and ridden everyday for a while if was a welcome break for us too.