Author: Mike Pekrul

We started out this afternoon to simply walk the rim trail to the west. We rode our bikes out to the first overlook and looked over the canyon. We did that a couple more times till we finally reached the place on the rim trail that we stopped this morning. As we started walking, it…

Ok, so it’s a BIG gully. Today we arrived at Grand Canyon National Park. We hadn’t even finished setting up the camper and already spotted some wildlife. Several elk were just walking around the campground. After finishing the setup and some lunch, we rode our bikes over to the rim, and got our first look…

Today we visited the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell, there have been a number of major discoveries coming from there. Percy Lowell himself “discovered” the canal systems stretching across the surface of Mars, and speculated about entire civilizations on Mars, leading to the entire genre of Martian storytelling. Even though…

Was an exciting day yesterday, as I walked through the snowy woods, hearing Susy’s fearful scream. 😳 Before the excitement, we had a great walk through the ponderosa pine forest, snow everywhere and more coming down, drifting through the trees, crunching as we walked. Silent and beautiful. After we walked for a while, Susy headed…

Yesterday we took a ride WAY out in the beyond, past where the road ends and civilization stops. So far that we were surrounded by scrub and hills and sky, and humans didn’t exist. Susy wanted to do some more rockhounding, so we went “out there”. Stopped the truck on the side of the wagon…

We visited Montezuma Castle National Monument today, and then went on to Montezuma Well, a secondary location together with the monument. Montezuma Castle is the name of a cliff dwelling in the Verde River valley, along Wet Beaver Creek. And no, I did not make that creek name up. It’s a well preserved site up…

Went into Sedona again and walked (not hiked) the Boynton Canyon trail and up to the Boynton Vista and our first vortex. It was kinda funny, when we started out from the trailhead, I looked up at two spires WAY WAY up from where we were, and made a joke to Susanne that we were…

Mostly a slow day today, it was HOT. Odd to think 83 is all that hot, but we haven’t seen that in quite a while. Grocery shopping. Did laundry, played Rummikub, took a nap. All the hard stuff that retirees have to contend with. After the heat started to settle down a bit, I pulled…

We spent the day yesterday around Sedona AZ. One of the prettiest places I think I’ve ever been. The town is back in a bit of a notch in a ring of mountains, surrounded by towering cliffs colored in shades of red, brown and tan. Striped layers. Eroded peaks and spires. Pine and piñon and…

We spent the day yesterday at Petrified Forest National Park, including the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. HUGE park. Don’t even try it if you don’t have at least 2-3 hours. We were there 5 hours and skipped a few things. The painted desert stuff is mostly up north, and the petrified wood is…