Summer is finally upon us, and the wife and I recently took a long overdue road trip out to the great American Southwest, aka Arizona & Utah. Anne was already out there for a week prior, setting up a design program at a school on the Navajo Nation. She'll be working with a team of volunteers teaching elementary school kids to design and build a sustainable vegetable garden. We rented a car in Phoenix and did a big loop up in to Utah and back down through the Navajo Nation, hitting a bunch of my favorite places in along the way for hikes, rafting, and roadside cheeseburgers. We also spent a few days in the Navajo Nation with some friends towards the end. Big sky. Fresh air. Good times.



SEDONA, ARIZONA

We met in Phoenix and drove 2 hours north to Sedona, home of some magical vortices and the kooky weirdos that flock to them. I have yet to discover any scientific basis for the existence of a spiritually energetic vortex other than the eye of Sauron, but I suppose anything is possible.

We stayed at The Amara, a relatively nice resort just down below the main drag on the north end of town. The room was adequate and the service professional. Outdoor dinners in the courtyard were accompanied by a white-linen-shirted bald guy without shoes playing a spanish guitar interpretation of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" and other soothing soft rock hits. You'd think this would make you want to stab somebody in the face (him, namely), but it was actually just very very amusing.

One night I sat at the bar, drinking tequila alone (as one does), listening to the bartender and another customer discuss some kind of sports equipment. They were using terms I had never heard, and I could not for the life of me figure out what sport they were so enthusiastically comparing notes on. After about 30 minutes I finally put it all together and realized they were talking about frisbee golf. Go figure.

Every other business in Sedona is some kind of magical crystal spa or yoga studio that sells magic rocks of some kind. It seems they have developed quite a lucrative "spiritual tourist" economy. Whatever works, right? Make that money. Yet the crowd is oddly suburban, and not the typical purple-robed, empty-nesters and bearded white swamis in flowing MC Hammer pants you might expect at such locales. I paid them no never mind and concentrated on doing some hiking. These pics are from the Jim Thompson Trail in the surrounding western hills.









The drive up through the Oak Creek Canyon, from Sedona to Flagstaff, is gorgeous. Every now and then you can catch a glimpse of the locals down in the canyon, sunning themselves on a rock or floating downstream in an inner-tube. This was clearly their version of the beach and it was pretty damn nice.

We continued north through the western edge of the Navajo Nation on Route 89, heading for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.



Once inside the reservation, we came across several of these cool wheat pastings on deserted buildings. This photo below was on an un-manned roadside stand smack dab in the middle of the desert. There were many more that I wanted to stop and photograph, but once you get up around 80mph on those straight arrow desert roads, slowing down is not always an option. Besides, we had places to be and a grand canyon to see.





Turns out the artist is actually a brother from North Carolina named Chip Thomas, who is a rez doctor by day and desert graf king by night. The woman pictured above is the woman who works that particular roadside stand. Chip has been doing these wheat pastings for several years now. I think he really captures the spirit of the people and I absolutely love the work.

These are a few more images of his I found online. Check out his blog HERE




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