Monday, April 17, 2006

A say what moment (and a good weekend)

I mentioned the other day that we were going to spend the weekend in Flagstaff. My other step-daughter, Shelby, the one I get along well with, lives there. That's a convenient excuse because Flagstaff is actually a pretty nice place to visit.

We were driving along such and such road toward the hotel after I'd spent some time setting up security on their wireless network when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a Mortuary. The 'Norval Owens Mortuary'. But what I thought I saw was the 'Novel Ovens Mortuary'. Quite the WTF moment!

A fun weekend. Played the tourist to the hilt. We went up via Sedona[^] which is, to my taste, a bit touristy but if you can ignore that side of things you'll see some really amazing geological formations. They don't call it 'Red Rock Country' for nothing. There are some Photos here[^].

Lunch at Sedona consisted of some spicy pulled pork sandwiches. Mucho tasty and well worth the 7 bucks a sanga!

After Sedona my wife wanted to find the Mayhew Lodge where she'd stayed as a child in 1960. I can understand that so off we set to find it. Instructions from the website were pretty clear, get to the junction of 169 and 89A at Sedona and drive north along 89A for 10.3 miles, then drop a left and we'd be there. And so it proved. A few minutes waiting for someone to leave the full car park so we could enter and we were off and walking.

We found the lodge, or at least the remains of it; it was burned down in 1980. We saw what appeared to be a guided tour and Sonya headed toward it, only to discover, as one of the members of the party frantically waved her away, that we'd stumbled into a wedding! We can both move pretty fast when it's warranted and I very much doubt they wanted a couple of middle aged dags in the background of their wedding photos, no matter how cute my accent might be!

Arrived in Flagstaff as aforesaid I set up their wireless network security and it was time for dinner, at Black Barts[^] named after this outlaw[^]. We bank with Wells Fargo and I have to admit that it was quite the surprise when I moved here to Arizona to find that my wife banked with Wells Fargo, a name I knew only from ancient Hollywood Westerns.

Good dinner though a trifle expensive.

After dinner we let Matt and Shelby do what they wanted with their evening; we went back to the hotel.

The next day (Sunday, Today) we went did the tourist thing in Flagstaff, visiting the Lowell Observatory[^]. I remember as a kid reading about Percival Lowell and his observatory in Flagstaff Arizona, never imagining that one day I'd be living in Arizona and would visit it. Fortunately it was closed today! Normally that'd be a downer but if you're visiting an astronomical observatory in the daytime and the gates aren't actually locked against you that's an advantage. It meant we could wander amongst the telescopes free of the crowds. I promise myself that I will one day make the time to be in Flagstaff at night when the observatory is open to the interested.

But the fun wasn't over yet. We also wanted to see the Riordan Mansion[^]. Good tour though I couldn't escape the feeling that the crew cut young man running the tour was staring at my long hair. Well worth the admission fee.

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