Cooling off in Flagstaff!

As the summer heat in the Arizona valley continues to be relentless, Jack and I decided it was time to give ourselves a break, if only for a week, and escape to the local mountains and our favorite campground in Flagstaff.  Months of triple digit heat, no matter how many times you go to the pool, or "play inside", it gets old, and you (or I should say I) need a break...or more accurately, need cool mountain air!  

I love it up in Flagstaff.  It's still unpretentious, yet big enough to have (more than) everything one needs and at 7000 feet have pine trees, cool clean air...and space!  The campground that we have been coming to for a number of years is "basic" - nothing fancy, just full hook-ups - and trees!  We don't need pools, or BBQs, or cabanas, or cable, or any of the other stuff that the other places offer (and charge for), just a nice quiet, clean spot to relax and enjoy the outdoors in.   I like that when we make our reservation and arrive, they remember us and welcome us back, always treating us like we are regulars, even though we probably only get up here once a year.  They must keep good records because they "remembered" where we were camped before and that we liked it and put us in that spot again and commented on that when we arrived.  Nice. 

 The weather has been so nice (one never really knows up here and needs to expect rain at any given time) that we decided to take a short drive and visit Winslow.  We hadn't been there in many years and I was wondering how it looked now, so off we went!  

You can't be a fan of the Eagles band and not heard of Winslow.  They made it popular with their song "Take It Easy" with the lyrics "Standin on the Corner in Winslow Arizona"... and the town has certainly taken advantage of it!  The song was actually written by Jackson Browne who was a good friend of Glenn Frey in the band.  Browne was in Winslow and did stand on a corner and saw a girl in a flat bed Ford look at him - so those lyrics are true to form.  

In 1999, a group of locals got together and formed the Standing On The Corner group (SOTC) to raise funds to create a Park (corner).  They sold "bricks" and raised enough money to hire a renowned sculptor (Ron Adamson) to create a bronze balladeer who now permanently stands on a corner in Winslow Arizona!  Additionally, they also hired artist John Pugh to create an amazing trompe l'oeill style mural that graces the brick wall of the Park.  It makes a fantastic "picture spot" to say the least!  In the middle of the road is a HUGE painted Route 66 as well.  That 4-Corner area is the heart of Winslow.  Across the street a musician was singing and playing his guitar and the two most prominent stores and an ice cream parlor are on those  corners as well.  After that, there wasn't to much else to see, unfortunately.  We spoke to one of the store owners and she said while they had been having a very good summer this year, COVID had really hurt the town and many of the other small businesses just couldn't make it through it.  It was really sad to see.  It used to be a thriving little tourist town before, now we could just about count the number of places on one hand.  We bought a couple of things, stopped in to the ice cream shop (had to help the town out!) and then headed on back.  

Bookstores and antique shops are the other thing we can't pass up here...so we made sure we visited our favorite ones...and sure enough we found some bargains we just needed to bring home!  Don't you just love it when that happens?  ;-)  

Won't my plants look great on these?

Well, the sun has been good to us during our stay.  I was worried that it would rain the whole time, but other than a couple of short, light showers, and one evening with a very loud thunder storm, it's been delightful.  The weather report kept "predicting thunderstorms" but then would revise it the next day to "partly cloudy with a high of 76-77".  Worked for me!  That was "sitting outside" (and reading) weather, and loving every minute!  It's going to be tough to go back down the mountain...but the high temp's can't last forever (can they?) and it IS almost September for goodness sake!  Pretty soon it will be cool enough for me to try and replant all the potted plants and areas that died because of that miserable heat (who says I'm not an optimist?)!  

...kicking back in Arizona,  Marie