HEADING HOME AFTER SEEING STARS

Leaving Borrego Springs, we headed to Kingman, Arizona where we met our friends, Sally and Jan. We left our rigs in the park there and drove the 80 plus miles to the glass Skywalk over the Grand Canyon. The last twelve miles was over a washboardy dirt road that turned our car into a dust ball and left our backs and butts aching.

The glass over the Canyon was awesome as we looked down suspended 7000 feet in the air. I was surprised that I felt no vertigo. Zoe was okay as long as she didn’t look down through the clear glass part. No personal items are allowed on the glass as they are concerned about them being dropped and scratching the glass. You have to wear booties over your shoes as well. So we weren’t able to take any photos while on the Skywalk but we did sit next to the canyon on a picnic table while we ate our lunch. A tribal ‘fancy dancer’ also performed for us.

Next we drove to Flagstaff and visited the Riordan mansion that is a fascinating Craftsman style. Two lumber barons brothers built it. One brother’s family lived in the east wing and the other’s in the west wing with a common room between. There were many innovative items for a house in Arizona in 1904: running water, inside toilets, hot and cold water, electricity, skylights, etc.

Finally we were able to visit the Lowell Observatory at night and saw a globular star cluster M15 with 350,000 stars, a comet and the Andromada galaxy. It was an honor to be at such a historical site where Pluto was first discovered and Lowell thought he saw canals on the moon. The original design of using auto tires as the rotation base for the dome is still in use. Flagstaff is the first ‘Dark Sky City’ in the world to see the stars better. All the city lights are aimed down.

Now we are back in our park in Mesa, AZ and catching up on appointments: hair, dentist, doctors, car, etc. The blog will be sparse for a while.