Flagstaff

The Little Painted Desert

The saddle between Mt Humphreys and Mt Agassiz

We spent 3 days in Flagstaff:

Day 1

We arrived at our B&B in Flagstaff (my gift to Kristen to celebrate our engagement in a place other than a tent) at dusk.  On the way over, we were lamenting the fact that our detour to Canyon de Chelly made it so we couldn’t see the Painted Desert.  But, as luck would have it, the back road we were on passed right by the “Little Painted Desert State Park”.  Which was honestly sort of a dump, but had nice-looking badlands in what Kristen described as ‘some of the colors you’d see at the real Painted Desert’.

The B&B turned out to be extremely cute as well.  It deserved all 5 stars on TripAdvisor.  The rooms were remodeled, Victorian, and super cozy, breakfasts were delicious and reasonably sized, and the innkeeper, Gordon, laid out fresh cookies, cider, and brandy every afternoon.  After the 3 nights with Bruce and April, and the 3 nights at the B&B, we were in for almost an entire week (!) of sleeping on real beds.

Day 2

We planned to go for a hike on our first full day in Flagstaff, probably in Sedona.  At breakfast, we told Gordon our plan, and he flipped out.  “Don’t go to Sedona!  That place is whacked out with weird hippie crap, and if you’ve already been to Moab, you’ve already seen the red rocks.  You should stay in Flag and go climb Mt. Humphreys.”  We were a little suspicious.  Sedona is supposed to be gorgeous, right?  But after 10 minutes of Googling, we were convinced.  Top hits for Sedona include hikes to ‘power vortex’ areas, and cite the involvement of ‘crystal healers’.  The pictures were quite beautiful, but Gordon was right, we had just spent 3 weeks looking at red rocks.  It was time for an old-fashioned mountain climb.

Mt. Humphreys is odd.  It towers above Flagstaff, topping out at around 12,500ft.  Built into its side is the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area.  I had no idea they had skiing, let alone snow in Arizona.  The hike covered around 4,000ft of vertical, though we turned back at the ~12,000ft saddle, so our vertical on the day was around 3,500.  What a nice hike.  It went through dense forest for the first few miles, then broke above the tree line for great views of the plain below, through scree fields, and finally a scramble up to the saddle.

Altitude is funny.  Kristen and I were feeling great the whole way up.  Then we came to a sign saying we were at 11,600ft.  Almost immediately we started to breathe harder, and each step became more labored.  If there had been no sign, would we have noticed the altitude at all?

Day 3

We drove up to the Grand Canyon, which I’ll cover in a following post.  Afterward, we holed up in our room to watch the election.  It was over a heck of a lot faster than we anticipated.  Since we were in the Mountain time zone, the election had been called by 8:30pm, which was early enough for us to get ice cream afterwards.