Band Trip, Day Four

Now it’s Sunday, our last full day in Arizona. We left pre-dawn and started traveling north. We stopped at Montezuma Castle National Monument, which is a cave dwelling that was in use during the Middle Ages. It was amazing to see how people lived, clinging to the side of a sheer limestone cliff at the top of a creek valley. Our guide was very informative and shared a lot of the history and culture with us.

From there, we followed a chaperone’s suggestion and detoured through Sedona. The red rock mountains were spectacular! Our driver pointed out “Snoopy Rock,” so named because it looks like Charlie Brown’s beagles lying atop his doghouse. The community itself looked like a fascinating place to shop for high end art and expensive time shares. As we continued north, we climbed a couple thousand feet on switchbacks with a precipitous drop-off over the side, not ten feet away from the bus. There was a change in the flora, shifting from desert cactus to highland scrub and pines. There was snow in the fields and on the mountain peaks. Especially beautiful was Mt. Humphrey, the highest point in the state.

Then, for the "grand" finale, we went to the Grand Canyon. I was really unprepared for the sheer majesty of it--I guess that's why they call it one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The students had a great time taking a ton of pictures of each other in every possible combination. I wondered aloud whether they were actually taking it all in--it's hard to appreciate it through a viewfiender. When I was a kid (I know, I know, back in the Dark Ages...), we didn't take many pictures because film and developing were expensive. When we visited a national monument, we looked at it, read the signs, and really experienced it. Now, it's all about the photo op. I hope our students took some time to quietly enjoy it and imagine what it took to create it.

So now we're at our new hotel in Flagstaff, and the kids are checked into their rooms. Tomorrow we head back towards Phoenix for our clinics at ASU, and then we go to the airport for our trip back to DHS. More to come...