Phoenix and more

Our drive from the South Rim took us through Sedona, what a beautiful place. I wish that we could have spent more time there but we were pulling the Casita and the roads were narrow and it was very, very hot.

One shot of Sedona




So we moved on to Phoenix (really Sun City) to spend a couple of days with my sister, Mary Jo. We got to meet many of her friends who were all very welcoming and a lot of fun. And we did city things. We went to a brand new music museum. It was wonderful. We were there over 3 hours and only made it through 2 continents. They gave us head phones and you would stop anyplace where there was a white box and music would play, from a particular place or time or a particular instrument. The collection is huge and there was more than you could see and hear. I only wish that there were a few more places to sit down. One of my favorite spots was where they showed how a Steinway piano is made (in the USA!) Did you know that Stevie Nicks was from Phoenix as well as Alice Cooper?

And so much great country, as in Duane Eddy's guitar below.



Our next stop on Tuesday was to go to Frank Lloyd Wright's home,Taliesin West in Scottsdale. What a day to forget our camera. The house and school were just amazing, how everything was built to flow right out of the desert. When he started this home there was nothing there, they lived in tents in the desert open to nature (as in snakes, lizards,etc!). His apprentices did all the work - moving the rocks, cutting the rocks, hauling this and that and he did the design and watched it evolve. There is still a school there with only 35 students and the first year they have to live outside in tents as the early apprentices had to do. But the space was just amazing.

Phoenix is HOT! When we left this morning the radio said that it was going to reach 104 (yesterday it was 102 degrees when we were exploring Frank's house!).

The sisters


So off we went to the Petrified Forest. And you probably know the science of how this all happened - the trees fall down, they float down the river, get water logged, sink to the bottom, get covered with sand and ash from the volcanoes (a key ingredient), get pushed up in time out of the water (still covered with all that ash and no oxygen getting in) and voila!, the wood turns to stone but what beautiful stone. So beautiful that over the years people have carted it away and turned it into jewelry, etc and tons of it are gone. The park receives packages every year with the rocks being returned with a letter saying how sorry they were for taking what they were not suppose to take. We resisted and took nothing but there were some real beauties.
And some amazing petroglyphs too!
















Time to turn in for the night. We leave tomorrow for New Mexico to see what we can see. We've been on the road for 4 weeks and it is going by much too fast. We leave for Maine in 13 days!

Hope you are all well and we miss you all!

j/k
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