Tempe to Flagstaff

I got up early and went for a run around Scott and Emily's neighborhood. The weather here in the desert is cold at night and in the mornings but warms up quickly once the sun comes out. Though we were ready to leave pretty early, we had a great conversation with Scott about differences in America and Britain. On our way out, we met their neighbors who are also PhD students in biology. One of them was catching hummingbirds to study their iridescent feathers, and we got to see baby and adult hummingbirds up close!

We drove through Phoenix and headed to Montezuma Castle National Monument, which is a restored clay castle in the side of a cliff. We were surprised when we saw a lot of people there, but then remembered it was the weekend! We also ate our regular lunch in the park: crackers, cheese, and ham!

Then we drove farther north on the interstate and found Montezuma Well, a huge natural warm spring.

We took a scenic route to Flagstaff and passed through Sedona - it was beautiful!!

We stopped at the Church of the Holy Cross, a building inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was so neat: a church built into the rocks!

On our way out Josh saw a bridge so we had to stop and get another photo... he loves large man-made structures!

The drive up to Flagstaff was beautiful, and we saw snow for the first time on the trip.

We met our host, Brent, at his house. He is a professor of mechanical engineering at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff; he got his bachelors from Berkeley and his masters and PhD from Georgia Tech, finally finishing in 2007. He took us to a fondue party that was hosted and attended by his students. We had a great time, especially when it turned into beer pong. I even met the actor Michael Cera, who was wearing the same henley shirt as me! (Just kidding, not Michael Cera.)

We got home very late but still wanted to get up before dawn tomorrow to see the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. Brent tried to get us not to leave that early by offering to cook us breakfast in the morning, but we set our alarm for 5 AM anyway.

Josh and I shared the same high for today: seeing the changes in Arizona has been amazing! It's desert in the south and a forest in the north, and just beautiful everywhere. I didn't know Arizona was like this! My low was feeling old at the fondue party... I'm at most three or four years older than the youngest students who were there, but I still felt kind of creepy. Josh's low was today he felt like he ran out of time to see everything; we didn't really experience much of Flagstaff. My "ho" was Josh at Montezuma Castle... the museum mentioned phases 1 through 5 of construction on the castle, and Josh joked that there were probably real estate agents trying to sell people the phase 5 penthouses with spectacular views and wonderful earth-toned walls and floors. Josh's "ho" was getting "iced" by Brent at the fondue party!