Day 9 (4/9)
Let the Adventuring Begin . . .
For Connie and me, Saturday morning was filled with laundry, last minuet shopping, repairs, etc. Megan and the girls spent time at the pool, but when a pair of kids closer to Maya’s age came, Lila lost interest and came into Stan and Marian’s house. Marian was showing Connie her crafts room when Lila became interested in an oval shaped wooden picture frame. Soon she and Marian were involved in a picture project to be displayed in the frame.
It wasn’t long before our short visit to Scottsdale came to an end. Stan fed us chicken sandwiches before we hit the road and Marian took some departing shots (pictures) and off we went. They were going to take Megan and the girls to the airport later in the day.
I had been talking incessantly about the beautiful drive into Scottsdale that Peter and I had while driving back from NYC last summer and was looking forward to showing Connie the beautiful water carved sand stone art show as we ascended out of the Valley of the Sun heading east. I hadn’t paid attention to the route Pete and I had taken last year and just assumed it was Highway 87, the main eastern route out of the Phoenix area. Well, I was wrong. It was not. But, it was spectacular in its own way. We rose through rocky hills of sage, mesquite, creosote and other chaparral flora, all lorded over by imperial Saguaro cacti. As our elevation increased, so did the majestic views and the numbers of Saguaros. The chaparral eventually gave way to small and then larger conifers. We also saw sign after sign telling us to watch out for the Elks crossing the road. In one instance, there were 8 in a row, separated by about 100 yds.
We crested one ridge and were amazed to find the horizon defined by the shear face of the Great Basin plateau not many miles ahead of us. It wasn’t too long before the world we had been driving through for the past two plus hours – crumbling, broken hills and chaparral and undulating tree covered mountains – became flat grasslands with endless vistas of plains, mesas and distant mountains under a never ending sky. We had to stop to take some pictures. We had started out at around 1000 feet of elevation, had peaked at around 7500 and were standing at 6400 feet. It was magnificent. I had to remind myself to keep an eye on the road as we drove on slowly descending to around 5000 feet as we approached I-40. Ninety-five miles up the freeway we checked into a motel in Gallup New Mexico. Tomorrow, the rubber hits the road.