Wupatki National Monument

For the impatient: Pictures

Over the July 4th weekend, we figured we'd climb up a few thousand feet and explore a bit of Arizona. We took the off-season ski lifts up to one of the peaks at Snowbowl and found ourselves at 11,500 feet learning about how we were actually in the middle of a set of volcanic peaks! Who knew? On the way down, we found ourselves racing an oncoming hail storm. The storm beat us to the car, but it still was rush racing through it all!

Later we visited Sunset Crater Volcano, a cinder cone volcano that has just recently exploded ... that's geologically recent (1000 years). There you can walk on young, and sharp, lava rocks and even get some views of the painted desert.

Unexpectedly, the coolest was Wupatki National Monument, a bonifide National Park. The monuments are really ruins from roughly 900 years ago. It was a little erie walking around the ruins knowing how recently folks had lived here.

We stayed the weekend in Flagstaff, which was pretty happening. The monthly Art Walk had people roaming around downtown and between the crepes and the cool galleries we had a nice little time. Fireworks were shot over Flagstaff for the first time in four years as a results of some fires. They decided to go with 'fire-safe' fireworks, which translates to ones that didn't shoot as high into the sky. The upside was that they let you get close ... really close. There were glowing embers landing feet from us and the fireworks looked giant and amazing!