Leaving Arizona, heading north into Utah

but first... the Grand Canyon.


It is grand, but again it's the 'big' picture. I must say that it got to be a bit of the same after a while, so when we ran into Mary Colter's buildings on the south rim, I finally found something to get excited about.

Among others, she was commissioned to design the Hopi House as a centre to sell native arts and crafts.


And the Watchtower as a multi-sided viewpoint, but the paintings (decorations) on the inner walls of the four levels - finally I found something I could get my fix of detail on!!


"This tower was built in 1932 by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe railroad. It is not a restoration or copy of any particular Indian ruin. Many months of research and three years of construction were needed to combine the finest examples of Indian designs and masonry found in the southwest."

Details of the outer wall where she is said to have hand picked each stone.


And detail of the inner walls...
"Devoted to replica of petroglyphs and pictographs of Mimbres pottery, sunshield and animals decorating rocks and walls in the Painted Desert Betatakin and Keet Seel cliff dwellings of Arizona, and many other important Indian ruins in the southwest."

"It is a masterpiece of atmosphere and ethno-history."

Hopi decorative symbols on inside walls.


I loved this place!!

As we headed north towards Moab, we drove through Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, just as the sun was setting in the west and the full moon was rising in the east. This was an unexpected treasure for us as we had no idea what was ahead. And as we started to drive through the area I was saying "OK, we have about 15 minutes left of light before the sun goes down below the horizon."


There are over 40 red and orange monolithic sandstone buttes and rock skyscrapers jutting hundreds of feet. This last photo was taken pretty late and it was dark - I am amazed at how well the full moon lit up the sky.

Now an absolutely eerie coincidence occurred when we checked into our hotel room that night and while flipping through the TV channels came across PBS playing the Philip Glass biography that I had seen last fall at the Calgary film festival (see my post September 24, 2008). At that precise moment the scene of him driving through Monument Valley was playing on TV showing the same scene we had just been through ourselves - shivers....

North around Flagstaff and La Postada

Traveling north to Flagstaff, we went looking for craters.

We started at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to learn about the cinder cone mountains that cover a 2000 square mile area to the north and east of Flagstaff. These mountains are all actually products of ancient volcanoes. The crater at Sunset is one of the largest.

We then traveled down the Interstate 40 (the old Route 66) to Meteor Crater. Now this is an impressive site, where a meteor landed 50,000 years ago and left a huge crater - it is 550 feet deep, 4000 feet across, and can fit 20 football fields within its' base. Apollo astronauts came to train here in the 1960s and '70s.

In the early twentieth century a mining engineer arrived from Philadelphia and tried to prove the crater was caused by a meteor rather than a volcanic explosion - he attained patent and ownership of the two square miles containing the crater and drilled for 25 years trying to find the giant iron meteorite. It wasn't until Eugene Shoemaker of the US Geological Survey proved in 1960 beyond any doubt that Meteor Crater was the product of a giant impact event.


From Meteor Crater, this is a view towards Flagstaff and the San Francisco Peaks at 12,000 feet.


We then drove into Winslow, Arizona for lunch and after ordering drinks in the 'Seattle Roast' coffee shop, we had a lovely conversation with the owner about a lunch place and he recommended La Postada just down the street. After further conversation we discovered the building had been built by Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railroad as a railway hotel in the 1930s who commissioned the famous SW architect Mary Colter to design it. It had been scheduled for demolition 15 years ago but was saved and lovingly restored. How could we resist going and exploring...


the ballroom


the veranda overlooking the train tracks


the back door in...


sitting in the back garden waiting for a train to go by


the famous dining room, The Turquoise Room (named after the private dining car which ran between Los Angeles and Chicago in 1936) which is winning awards from culinary magazines and Conte Nast traveller magazine.


details from the dining room lights - Mexican hand painted glass and pressed tin