Exploring the American Landscape
Beaches and more
Well, so much for the trees. After leaving Cottonwood and its relatively leafy environment, we headed to northeastern Arizona, where the Colorado Plateau put us at relatively high elevation but in an arid desert environment with virtually no trees in sight. The flat, scrubby high plains just go on forever. We were scheduled to be … Read more
After our stop at Picacho Peak we skipped right over the Phoenix metro area and landed in the historic town of Cottonwood, nestled along the Verde River at an elevation of around 3,500 feet. That increase in elevation meant a few things: our arrival just days after a major snowstorm meant we encountered plenty of … Read more
Our final stop in the dramatic and beautiful Sonoran Desert was a short stay at Picacho Peak State Park, located about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix. The day after we left Tucson, the state of Arizona experienced a freak weather pattern that brought several inches of snow to Tucson and Phoenix, and dumped a record-breaking … Read more
One of our bucket list items for our time in Arizona was a visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, located deep in the heart of the Sonoran Desert along the border with Mexico. We weren’t sure whether the government shutdown would impair our experience, but we decided to stick with our planned schedule and … Read more
We arrived in Arizona after our week at Joshua Tree with the federal government still shut down and still throwing a wrench into our plans. Fortunately we had built some flexibility into our schedule, so we decided to hunker down for a week near Quartzsite, Arizona to see how things developed in Washington. Quartzsite The … Read more