exploring north of phoenix -- flagstaff, sedona, & montezuma's castle

i’m from the east coast, so i’m still getting used to living out west. on the east coast, there are more people and those people are all living in close proximity to one another. if i want to go from washington dc to philadelpha, it’s a 3 hours drive. dc to new york city is 5 hours. things are close together. this is not the case out west. states are bigger and things are further apart. so it’s not surprising that we haven’t really explored much more of arizona than tucson. especially north of phoenix.

phoenix is two hours away and we try to go there as infrequently as possible. it’s a big city with a lot of traffic, and though there are definitely nice places to eat at, hike, or tube down, we are quite content in tucson. but we’ve heard great things about flagstaff and have been meaning to check it out for a while. so when rcg found out that rebelution was playing at the orpheum theatre in flagstaff we decided to make the trip up. 

flagstaff is a small town of ~65,000 people located in the mountains, about an hour and a half north of phoenix. it’s a college town with an overabundance of subaru cars. it’s chilly, even at the end of march, because it sits at 6,900 feet. the people are friendly and outdoorsy and the restaurants serve delicious food. 

 

we spent our morning at priest draw, a veritable bouldering playground. priest draw is located at the end of a dirt road in the coconino national forest and it is a favorite bouldering spot for climbers. we got there early and walked around, trying our hand at climbing the many large rocks that litter the dry riverbed. we didn’t have a crash pad, so we just played around, doing easy climbs and spotting one another. but now that rcg has bought a crash pad i can see us returning to flagstaff and priest draw again in the near future. if you’re interesting in checking out priest draw get there early; at about 11am the area becomes overpopulated with climbers, and while there are plenty of rocks to climb you will most likely have to share the more popular climbs. 

   

in the evening we went to see a concert at the orpheum theatre and it’s an awesome concert venue. there’s a bar and both a seating area and a large dance floor. and the acoustics are great. if you get a chance to see a concert here, please take that opportunity; you won’t regret it. 

the opening act: hot rain

rebelution

  

 

  

on our way down to tucson from flagstaff we decided to head off the main highway, I-17, and take a back road through sedona. sedona is known for its red sandstone formations and vortexes. sedona’s vortexes, spots that are supposed to have special healing properties, have made sedona a favorite location for artists and healers, and the red rocks have made it a popular spot for outdoorsy people. we didn’t stop, except at a rest stop to snap a few pictures, but the red rock formations were spectacular. we’re hoping to return to camp and hike in this area when it gets a little warmer. 

 

  

 

shortly after getting back onto I-17, we turned off again to go to montezuma’s castle, one of north america’s best preserved cliff dwellings. montezuma’s castle is similar to the casa grande ruins: it’s $5 to walk around, there isn’t a whole lot to see, as you can’t go up into the ruins, and it is a mystery as to why these cliff dwellings were abandoned. but it was nice to get out of the car, walk around, and see a little bit of arizona’s history. 

what other cool things in arizona should we explore?

2013 -- week 16 -- date night under the stars and our engagement!

growing up i wasn't super athletic; i played soccer for a couple of years, but who didn't? i wasn't good, by any stretch of the imagination. in fact, i was the joker near the goal box who would run up to kick the ball and watch the ball sail past me towards the goal. it was a disaster. i only played a couple of seasons before realizing that it was a waste of everyone's time. i was much more suited to running. i didn't need hand-eye coordination, something i clearly lacked, all i needed was a pair of shoes and a road. now as i've grown up, i've gotten lazy and developed asthma, so i don't run nearly as much as i should. but i do still enjoy being outdoors and getting the blood pumping, so we decided to play kickball (plus we wanted to make friends). we started in the fall and met such great people that we came back for the spring season, and have already signed up for the summer season too. and this season we're actually starting to get good, it's kind of exciting. (check out plan b!)

maybe one the best nights of my life was two summers ago in oaxaca. it was the day after i met rcg, and we went to a lagoon to swim with bio luminescent algae. swimming and shimmering in this lagoon was a once in a lifetime experience. but the night was made so much better, for me anyways, because you could see every star in the sky. you could make out constellations that you rarely could find and you could see both bands of the milky way. it was spectacular. and i got to share it with rcg. it was kind of like our first date. ever since that night, whenever the night is clear and the stars are out, we try and take a minute to enjoy the beauty of the night sky. so it seemed only fitting that we go to kitt peak national observatory, a mountain in the sonoran desert that hosts the world's largest collection of telescopes, for a date night. 

kitt peak has a nightly observing program ($50/person) where you show up before sunset and stay until well into the night to look at and learn about the stars, planets, moon, and the telescopes. we learned so much! and we got to see some of the coolest stuff ever -- the banding on jupiter, saturn's rings, and the craters on the moon. when we looked at saturn it was like a picture out of a magazine or a textbook; when rcg looked at it, his first words were, "holy shit". it was that amazing. and the telescope was powerful enough to show both saturn and jupiter's moons. it was crazy. but the night only got crazier -- after we drove down the mountain (the first mile with no headlights!), rcg pulled over and asked me to marry him! i'm still a little shocked, but in a deliciously happy kind of way.

2013 -- week 12 -- fun with friends: on a mountain, in a garden, & at a concert

i'll admit, when we first moved to tucson i was definitely worried that we'd have a hard time making friends, but fate stepped in and introduced us to some pretty spectacular folks. as a result our time in tucson has been sincerely enriched -- we've done things that maybe we wouldn't normally do (like hike baboquivari), we've eaten food that we wouldn't even begin to know how to make (like mozambican prawn curry), and we've had amazing times and enlightened conversations.

it's so cool to think about the fact that even though there are 6 billion other people on this planet, you can still meet new people that just fit right into your life. like you've known them forever. or you'll be friends forever. people that you can learn from, that you can share interests with, and who can touch your life. we've been fortunate enough to meet some people like this in tucson. and i'm still amazed that it all worked out in the way that it did.

my new favorite app: vine

how often do you get half way through a video and get bored? i mean, in theory we want to see the entire video, but, ugh, how boring. at the same time, watching tiny clips of videos is just as annoying. vine is a new app that tries to be the best of both worlds.

the way it works: you take 6 seconds of video and then vine puts it all together and loops it. you build your video, or "film", by touching your finger to the screen, taking it on and off, as you film different things. then you can share your video via twitter or facebook.

my complaints: you can share your videos on facebook, but you can't find out if your facebook friends are on vine. annoying. i realize that there's a huge war going on between the different social media platforms, but everyone's social media accounts are totally integrated, not allowing us to benefit from that is rude. my other complaint is that i can't even find friends in my phone's address book. maybe i don't have any friends who have vine -- it is still pretty new -- but it seems unlikely because some of my friends are pretty techy.

complaints aside, this may be the coolest thing i've found since instagram. i kind of want to use it all the time.

do you have vine?

(what's your name? i want to follow you!)

(follow me on vine: vmboda)

tumamoc -- amazing views of tucson and a sore butt

when you think of the desert, you think of a flat, dry landscape. at least that's what i thought of. then i moved here, and it is definitely dry and flat, but it also has more mountains and hills than i ever could have imagined. and they are surprisingly beautiful. they are covered with saguaros and super rocky, but they have this quiet beauty that comes from being created millions of years ago. 

lucky for us, we know some awesome people who are from this part of the world, and they have been opening our eyes to the beauty of hiking and seeing the world from a new, higher up, perspective. this past weekend, they took us climbing up tumamoc "hill". (it's a hill in the respect that it is only 3000 feet high, rather than mt. lemmon's 9000 feet.)

they told us that the trail was about 1.5 miles and paved. awesome. we figured we'll do a quick little walk about this hill and then go grill out and enjoy the sunshine. we did not realize that we had 1.5 miles to go up 1000 feet in elevation. it was a steep climb. a really steep climb. but the views of tucson were amazing.  

the trail is easily accessible from the parking lot behind st. mary's hospital, which is located in the eastern part of downtown tucson at silverbell road and st. mary's road. 

plan b.

when was the last time you played kickball?

elementary school?

yeah, me too.

but we joined an adult kickball league

for the fall season. 

because who doesn't like the idea

of drinking and playing kickball?

plus, it was a way for us to make friends. 

it was a great time.
and we made some great friends.



but we lost.

a lot.




and in the end
we weren't as bad
as we thought we were.

 

 

here's to you, plan b.
you're number one in my book.