HELLRAISING IN ARIZONA
/So much to see, so little time… What to do with the week of “Spring Break” we traditionally spent at my mum’s gorgeous Spanish hideaway? Recommendations came flooding in from all our new friends, and we almost went with the famous Big Sur road trip before settling on Arizona, figuring it would be too hot to go back there in the summertime. “We can camp!” I threatened, “It will be practically free!” After spending more money on camping equipment than flights to Hawaii would have cost, and grossly overestimating the amount of space in our new car, we hit the open(ish) road, the kids squashed awkwardly between roll up mattresses and mountains of crisps.
Los Angeles to Tempe was a cheerful 6 hour drive, with one stop at Denny’s where the kids begged for birthday cake pancakes for lunch, but eventually settled on revolting corn dogs instead. We had booked into the Graduate hotel by Arizona State University because it looked more friendly than the generic, budget places on the outskirts of town - and had a pool. The kids were straight in as the golden sun went down, and we all enjoyed gawping at dinner as college girls in thong bikinis chatted up the bartenders while we ate. We rose early for pancakes, relieved to have booked a yummy, fun hotel for only slightly more than one of the bigger chains, or a terrifying murder motel.
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Next an hour-ish drive north of Phoenix through the desert and into the magical realm of Arcosanti. Paolo Soleri’s ode on alternative city design bubbles up from the amber landscape ready to inspire. Dripping in bells of burnished bronze and copper, with a rainbow coloured amphitheatres and the neon blue sky offsetting great sand-sculpted archways painted in reds and ochres. As we were given a tour by a nervously giggling barefoot resident I made mental notes to build my imaginary dream house in its image, bells and all.
After a forgettable lunch in the Arcosanti canteen we jetted on to the cowboy folklore town of Prescott, and immediately regretted not holding out for grub in one of its famous old wild west saloons on Whisky Row. Up in the mountains it felt cooler and bluer, filled with piano playing cowboys and beautiful old shops. We blew our brief time there queuing for ice creams and eyeing up walls of glittering children’s cowboy boots, then off again in a panic to pitch our tent in Sedona before nightfall.
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Camp Avalon was to be home for the next three nights, hunted down online as somewhere that seemed on the more beautiful, less terrifying side of remote. The camp is a “spiritual nature retreat” running alongside Oak Creek, in full watch of Sedona’s famous red rock towers. It was quiet, safe and mystical with plenty of space for the kids to scamper about throwing their Aerobie into countless trees and fishing it out again with a long stick. Konch grumpily raised our loyal circus tent, still caked in last Glastonbury’s mud and patched up with gaffa tape galore, and the kids wrapped up in much loved new fleeces and took charge of a camp stove supper.
Camp Avalon first night supper
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I had visions of waking at dawn for vortex yoga then spending the days hiking the Arizona wilds, my crew enchanted by the crimson rock castles and condors galore, but the reality was long mornings at the tent with grumpy tired husband and wildling frisbee-obsessed kids, washing up pancake breakfasts in icy water and begging everyone to get a move on. By late morning on day one I had managed to drag them on a hike to Devil’s Bridge, which I promised was quick and easy and would be punctuated by numerous snack stops. We immediately took a wrong turn onto the “advanced” trail, following some people who disingenuously looked to be at a similar level of frailty as us. We wove through pines and over boulders, scratched our heads at arrowed signposts and secretly hoped for a rattlesnake viewing. The kids veered between agony at the extreme boringness of it all and glee as they clambered over streams and slid down neon stone. A couple of hours and many snack bars later we hit the base of the last climb to Devil’s Bridge, the largest natural sandstone arch in Sedona, and gazed up at tourists nonchalantly jumping from rock to rock hundreds of feet in the air. This was the end of the road for me and my vertigo (and my children, thanks to my vertigo) though Konch went up for the full hike payoff view whilst we slid about on rocks and ate sandwiches. Despite not making it to the cliff edge I loved this whole jaunt, whingeing soundtrack and all, the sweeping orange views and the sagebrush scented air. We took the “easy” trail back which was essentially a twenty minute shuffle down a dirt road, through clouds of dust in the midday sun, so I’m smug about our wrong turn at the start and accidentally experiencing the best of it.
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Determined to get the most out of the day we zipped over to Slide Rock State Park , a self professed “natural water park”, where Oak Creek weaves through sandstone chutes. We all had an awkward car change into swimsuits and the kids ran urgently to the water. There were tiers of emerald and turquoise pools connected by slippery rock slides rushing with icy snow melt. My fear of being even slightly cold prevented my joining the fun as the boys leapt and slid and shrieked at the temperature. Indy gave it twenty minutes before returning to laze with me: lizards in the sun. I imagine that in the summer it’s both warmer and more crowded. We emerged happy and sun kissed, the day felt full and we were tired in the best kind of way.
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That night we snuggled in the dark listening to the coyotes sing, waking to a grey morning. The forecast was for rain, which I immediately claimed to be a conspiracy, and we made worried eye contact over the fate of the patchwork tent. We sacrificed another hike for a trip to Montezuma Castle, the ruins of a 600 year old Sinagua pueblo built into the towering limestone cliffs. We arrived as a ranger was racing out to catch a rattlesnake that had been sighted crossing the path, so the kids shot after him whilst we shivered around the information boards, and then shivered around them again as Indy eagerly filled in her ranger’s handbook. The ruins were fascinating but the true highlight of this visit was discovering that Pablo, as a 4th grader, earned us a special pass making all National Park entry free to us for the rest of the school year! This proved to save us a fair wad of cash.
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A miserable late afternoon followed, strolling around characterless Sedona town under threateningly dark skies. An endless strip mall of exactly the same tourist shop again and again, glancing nervously at the clouds and shivering, we decided to treat ourselves to a hot dinner out. As we bundled into one restaurant, then another, we were horrified to discover that everywhere had table wait times of at least two hours. We eventually settled on one and managed to somehow kill the time chatting to kindly strangers and taking turns sitting on the only chair, grumpily sipping cocktails, but take note and if ever planning supper in Sedona: book.
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Next morning the sun was back but the tent was soggy. We fled to town for acai bowls whilst it dried, then packed the car in slow motion whilst it dried some more. Our plans for an early getaway to the Grand Canyon had been kicked to the curb by the weather, and we set off late for Flagstaff where we had been told good burritos waited - stopping en route to buy Navajo opal jewellery and gawp and incredible viewpoints. Flagstaff was crisp and blue and pretty streets, Route 66 retro and ghost stories, with a backdrop of magical snowy peaks. We felt instant remorse at not plotting more time here, and made a whistle stop tour of cute vintage shops and sweet smelling bakeries before landing at MartAnne’s Burrito Palace for an obscenely large lunch and panicky chats about how to squash the Grand Canyon back into the schedule without resorting to a National Lampoon’s drive by photo op alone.
It was my turn to drive, and the unplanned two hour journey from Flagstaff to Marble Canyon, bypassing the Grand Canyon, was a favourite bit of the whole trip. Fantastic vintage motels I still regret not photographing sped past as we left Flagstaff on Route 66, before the long, straight road opened to miles of virtually empty Hopi and Navajo reservation lands. It was the golden late afternoon and the landscape changed from hills to plains to rainbows rock formations, with never more than a derelict gas station or tiny three-house village to break the sci-fi view.
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As the sun began to set we arrived at our airbnb in Marble Canyon, truly the most middle of nowhere place I’ve ever stayed. The address was un-mappable so Aaron, our host, told us to look out for three white houses and walked to the end of the drive to flag us down. We were welcomed to the traditional Navajo hogan he had built in the yard of his home from local sandstone, a beautiful roundhouse thoughtfully furnished and decorated. Lovely old wooden beds and Navajo blankets awaited, beautiful books and artefacts lined the walls. Beyond was a paddock of horses backed by an amber wall of canyon. Aaron built us a campfire outside and we grilled chicken and sat on sunwarmed stone benches to watch the moon rise over the canyon in silence. The kids were in bliss with space to explore and frolic once more, and the entire setting was an incredible, peaceful dreamscape. Once the sky was dark the stars surrounded us in a twinkling dome. I curled up with a beautiful book on Adam Clark Vroman and read it cover to cover before descent into a long sleep.
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The door to our hogan opened to the East, Aaron’s Navajo mother in law explained to us that this was traditional, to wake with the rising sun. The morning’s sunrise was magnificent over the looming amber cliffs, and we fried up some blueberry buckwheat pancakes on the little hogan camping stove and ate outside under the glow. Pablo lazed on the bed reading “Death in Grand Canyon”, plucked from the shelves of the hut, in preparation for the day ahead. Our lovely hosts dropped by with their grandson’s favourite board game to distract the kids whilst we repacked the car and plotted a backtrack route to the Grand Canyon’s east entrance. A drearily long car-packing job later we left, late for the touristy day ahead and reluctant to depart this magical land.
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After much bickering over our lateness we had to forfeit the planned hike down into the canyon and settle for a plod around the rim, heavily populated by loudly farting elderly tourists and the occasional terrifyingly neglectful family posing for cliff-edge selfies with unattended toddlers. I was the shrieking mother twelve feet from the edge with the eye rolling, rather bored children. The views are so magnificently vast they almost appear flat. Highlights were soaring condor and the endless stream of fairytale elk who sloped out of the forest in front of our car, and the plotting of future adventures into the canyon’s depths, perhaps by boat perhaps by horse perhaps by foot. Our two hour plod around the edge felt like a tease of the escapade that could have been, but we ticked it off the list Griswold-style and leapt into the car to attempt to reach Page by sundown.
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Sundown came and went, but we punctuated the pitch black drive with crispy, doughy Navajo fry bread for supper and arrived at our next wild west home fed and ready for bed. This next stop was more rustic but comfy, four to a tipi on camp beds under fleecy blankets, almost spookily remote but for some neighbours in the tipi next door and the twinkling lights of the Navajo generating station towers in the distance. We managed an early start and were greeted by our hosts RoseAnn and Lester hitching up a huge covered wagon to their truck and inviting us on a tour of their own private slot canyon. We had already booked onto the much hyped, much recommended, heavily Instagrammed tour of very famous Lower Antelope Canyon later that morning, and so had to decline. As I watched Lester’s wagon rattle off down the dirt track towards the horizon, two tour guests on board, I wondered if we had made a terrible mistake.
In the middle of nowhere somewhere outside Page
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As we pulled up at “Ken’s Tours” my regret began to further swell. I had expected the tour to be busy, and in my imagination that meant maybe 20 of us clambering down into the canyon at once, but the scale was beyond anything I could have imagined. Fifty people descend into the canyon every thirty minutes, shuffling single file through the beauty and angling for endless extra-orange-filtered selfies. Our tour guide was insistent I not take pictures when I wanted to because he knew where the best shots were, and persisted to endlessly offer to just take all my pictures for me - as he did for the rest of the group - because he was “great at this”. My polite rebuffs rapidly became impatient. It was a far cry from the adventure I promised the kids, and the sheer numbers - 6,000 people a day in high season - made us all feel a bit depressed. The landscape itself is from another galaxy, magic shafts of sunlight filtering copper dust and polished layers of salmon, peach, coral stone, curved underground archways and tangerine sand, indigo shadows and maroon meringue swirls of sculpted stone. Hard to get lost in the glory of it all when you’re in a swamp of screaming babies, shouting tour guides and selfie sticks, but also hard not to get some incredible captures and be awed by the otherworldliness. An expensive casualty of Instagram; with any extra time and money we would have returned to take our host up on a private slot canyon tour instead to fulfil our Indiana Jonesy longings. Here follow some deceptively gorgeous photos of lower Antelope Canyon…
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We recovered from the swarming of Antelope Canyon with amazing baskets of fries, ribs and slaw at Big John’s Texas BBQ, kind of a revamped petrol station with huge smoking BBQ drums and fun retro vibes. Delicious pulled chicken and house made sauces, friendly smiling waitress of dreams, and big cold drinks to prep us for the afternoon’s boat trip on Lake Powell. Not truly a lake but a reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border, a giant flooded canyon named for a one-armed 19th century explorer, it weaves big blue veins through the electric land. A surreal approach down a broad concrete drive led to a sweet little boat with captain and guide and a gaggle of co-tourists. As we pulled away from the dock we passed row upon row of resting double decker houseboats of varying luxury, most with winding slides on the sides; the lake is a mega summer vacation destination and they cost from $10,000 a week to hire and pootle about exploring on, necessary extended family and beers and speedboats not included. The lake was a serene contrast to Antelope Canyon and just as beautiful, our journey interrupted only by the odd kayak or paddle board rounding the canyon’s curves, and the water a perfect mirror for the sky. The colours of the golden, pink and yellow rust-topped cliffs rising from and diving into the completely clear water, all indigo and turquoise, felt hypnotic. We all decided to come back and spend a week houseboating from cove to cove, camping under the sparkly skies, when we are good and rich.
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Returning to our tipi we found we were alone on site for the night, just in time for golden hour and a big family frisbee session as the fire heated up. These evenings in the middle of nowhere as the sun set and everything became neon and surreal were my favourite bits of the trip, the timelessness they conjured and the connection to the soul of land and sky. Then we tucked into campfire macaroni cheese and sweet potato flatbreads, watched the moon rise and the stars appear and the fire crackle and the marshmallows turn black.
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We bid farewell to the Wild West over sun soaked bacon the next morn and hit the endless highway to Las Vegas, depressingly the natural halfway point home to LA. We swung by Horseshoe Bend, another famous traveller’s snap ravaged by overtourism - until recently somewhere you could stumble across on a hike, but social media fame means there is now a paid car park and half built visitor’s centre, plus a few coaches to compete for space with. I guiltily joined the masses in snapping my iPhone picture of the incomprehensible natural glory, jostling for space with a flock of noisy French teenagers and Japanese couples in extreme UV protective outfits. Stunning to spend a few moments gazing down at the boats and campers on the emerald Colorado river below, another experience to add to our fantasy future caper wishlist.
Horseshoe Bend - like Mars, but wetter
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A last minute room at the apparently 5 star Mirage failed to be the “Paradise of 24 Hour Action!” it promised. We zoomed to the pool to find it temporarily closed due to a “biohazard incident” (yikes) and couldn’t drum up enthusiasm for the giant souvenir glassed frozen daiquiris among endless rows of sweaty beige plastic sun loungers, or the dosh for the Beatles Cirque du Soleil cash cow at $200+ per seat. Dinner was a dispiriting buffet in a low lit canteen that reeked of the sickly combo of cigarettes, air freshener and regret wafting in from the casino. Large, sad people sat alone with their enormous souvenir cocktails and platters of congealed spring rolls. Our room was caked in dust and splatters and fingerprint smears on the headboard, but a getaway to plod the strip was dull and exhausting, all aggressive adverts and shopping mall mazes among crowds mulling over Gucci handbags and cheeseburgers. Back to the grotty hotel for a restless night, then a reluctant splurge on ludicrously pricey Easter brunch at the nearby & nicer Wynn to cheer ourselves before a squeeze into the dusty car for one last leg.
I queued for this photograph…
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The day-glow photo op of dreams, Seven Magic Mountains lies just outside Las Vegas and eases the misery of being in its aura. Seven towers of neon painted rock backdropped by desert and dry lake, lots of fun to force your children to pose for photos in front of, if you can get there early enough to avoid (or be patient enough to wait out…ahem) your fellow photo-op fiends. This whimsical take on the paradox between the natural and artificial landscape of Las Vegas and the desert beyond seemed an appropriate end to our magical week through Arizona’s mystical Star Wars architecture, water, land and sky. Farewell to coyote lullabies and Martian dust. As ever, dreaming of a return.
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