Beautiful Day for a Drive

We travel into the night, pushing northward from Roswell, NM, hurried by our need to be in Lake Havasu City on Thursday for needed repairs to our airbag system.

After climbing winding mountain passages to arrive at our campground (Wal-Mart in Cottonwood, Az), we sleep easily and awake to tremendous vistas from every window in Otto. What a view (see above)! The sun is bright and the air is crisp.

Route 89-A from Sedona to Flagstaff unfolds vistas of tremendous beauty through the densely wooded Oak Creek Canyon and along breathtaking uphill switchbacks.

White spires race skyward. Red rock buttes push through below, mounding and rounding everywhere. In the Coconino National Forest, Navaho artisans sell traditional wares (horsehair pottery and jewelry made of beads, feathers, sand and silver) through a Native American Vendor Project sponsored by Native Americans for Community Action in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.

I meet artisan Lorraine Nincto, a Navaho jeweler, shown below holding the turquoise necklace she fashioned and I bought. Lorraine's granddaughters are Navaho dancers and are hoping to perform at the Seneca Nation PowWow in Binghamton.

The day is filled with beautiful images. See some of them by clicking here.

We end the day in a Flagstaff dog park, where we connect via Skype to the PC Users Group meeting in Liverpool, NY, as part of a "Point 'N Click" TV show reunion. They are under a foot of snow; we have a bright day, with temps in the 50s. Our Internet connection is bad. We talk briefly. The night here gets below freezing. But we stay warm in Otto.