Ryan and I had a great 2.5 day stay in Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s a great town of burned out hippies, students and young people hiking and climbing, touring panhandlers, adventurous professionals, and southern Arizonians escaping the heat in the 7000 ft + altitude. Before we left Chicago, Flagstaff was on our “Top 5” list for potential places to live, pending job searches and successful visits. On our way out of Flagstaff, I think we both agreed it’s currently #1 (apparently a lot of people agree…rental prices in the area aren’t cheap). Granted, we’ve only been to two of our “Top 5” so far, but suffice it to say we really enjoyed ourselves and loved the spirit of the place. Big shout out to one of my oldest and dearest friends from Nashville, Timothy, who is currently in forestry school at NAU and let us stay in his house on Humphrey St. while he was off “working” in the Carson National Forest in New Mexico. It was the perfect location from which we could do all of our exploring. We fit in: a rodeo, a near-summit on Mt. Humphreys (tallest in AZ!), dinner with Marilyn (Ryan’s step-grandfather’s cousin, who’s now practically an aunt to us), great meals at 4 different restaurants, visits and applications to 3 different area schools – fingers crossed, pray to the gods of employment for us.

Photos and journal excerpts:

“The 2 hour + drive up to Flagstaff was delayed by standstill traffic about halfway en route, due to an accident. Since we were traveling up steep inclines to higher altitude, we had the AC off to keep the engine from overheating, and we both roasted in an hour of traffic. Finding me in a sour, sweaty mood, Ryan was wise enough to start blasting some music from our road trip playlist and I was soon in better spirits, or, more specifically, singing obnoxiously loud with windows down.”

“After arriving and meeting Timothy’s roommates we walked to dinner at Pizzacletta, a great little spot, where we sat at an outdoor counter seat, right on the sidewalk near downtown Flagstaff. Perfect temp, lovely evening, 3 oz glass of wine (perfect for my embarrassingly immature wine palate and tiny budget), marinated fig and cheese plate with excellent housemade mozzarella, and a perfect ‘traditional’ pizza for the two of us. Loved the walkability – 15 mins in the dry temperate weather through the main part of town, a major relief after 115 degree Phoenix. Resolved to go to the 2nd Annual Flagstaff Rodeo which happened to be in town and recommended to us by Timothy’s roommates, as a way to get out and see more of Flagstaff and made it happen!”

“Field Notes:

Sunset splash across painted clouds; lightening backdrop behind rodeo stage; rhinestones, sparkles, and cultural mashup at the rodeo; Native Americans, hippies, cowboys, rural Arizona, and NAU students all showed up strong for the rodeo”

“As always, great people watching at the rodeo. Fun to go to a second rodeo together after last summer at Frontier Days. This ain’t our first rodeo, literally. Light rain, although we were covered in the grandstand, but awesome lightening show behind the rodeo. Next stop: Coldstone for ice cream, obviously. Ryan and I have come across great or at least decent coffee in most of the places we’ve gone through, but we keep asking ourselves how more places haven’t taken on the Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream model. As far as I can tell, this beats out any other ice cream chain, and any walkable downtown area needs a good ice cream shop. Coldstone has weird singing for tips that makes me feel like the whole staff is on some sort of weird chain gang. After finishing a tip song, one of the Coldstone employees gave us the scoop on Flagstaff: ‘Great, if you don’t mind being in a city that’s totally reliant on a university.'”

“Actually made it up at 6am (this always feels like a personal triumph since I’m the one who has earned a reputation as definitely not a morning person) and headed out for our Mt. Humphrey’s summit. Unfortunately, waylaid by me stupidly relying on google maps to get us to the trailhead and took us to the wrong side of the mountain. Bummed me out, but after 40 minute detour we made it to the trail and started ~8:30am – so much for our early start.

Beautiful trail, but lots of hikers and runners, and trying to stay hydrated on the warm day we both ended up having to pull off the trail to pee constantly. Awkward to pee on a busy trail. Pretty sure I was caught pants down in what I thought was a hidden, off trail spot by at least one hiker. Oops. Getting our hiking legs on us and shaking off our city selves. Some room for improvement – fitness, blister preparedness, hips, heads, and attitudes (mostly mine). But fun to attempt a summit together. Turned back near the saddle. Big storm rolling over as the morning turned to afternoon and we decided not to push it. Next time!

Highlights: Lady on the trail, referring to Ryan’s handkerchief being tied around his head: “Nice ‘glad rag’!” Us: “Huh?” Her husband/trail partner: “Do you mean ‘doo-rag’?” Her: “Oh, yea. It just looked so glad…”

Dude runner, sprinting past us on the trail, apparently reaching the summit, coming back down and lapping us. One day, hopefully soon, we, too, shall be fit, mountain running people!!

Had a lovely burger dinner courtesy of, get this, Ryan’s birth mother’s, mother’s, second husband’s cousin (or, his grandfather’s cousin, but I think it’s more impressive to give the full degree of separation to show how many distant friends and family we’ve encountered on this trip so far). We walked down to Diablo Burger to meet Marilyn and had a great time chatting and getting to know her. Especially liked the local almost sour beer I had…wish I could remember the name of it or the brewery…high altitude, plus an active, relatively low calorie day meant that the high percentage beer had me feelin’ pretty good.

We stayed an extra night at Timothy’s (thanks, Tim and Tim’s roommates!) and got up early to go to Macy’s, on Marilyn’s recommendation. Had a delicious breakfast and coffee and worked hard to send out some resumes and then stopped by some of the school’s we applied to to try to get a face-to-face with some of the folks in charge. Although we both had doubts about the kind of success we could have by just showing up to school’s unannounced, resumes in hand, we both were quite pleased and surprised to be able to speak with the director’s of two of the three school’s we stopped at. Don’t think it could’ve turned out much better if we’d planned it.

We spent a couple more hours bumming around downtown Flagstaff following up on our successful job search day, including a lunch stop and Salsa Brava, which we really liked. Ryan finally got the fry bread taco he’d been pining after.

Headed out of town, despite Marilyn very generously offering us a night at her place. Followed Timothy’s directions to an abandoned airfield in Kaibab National Forest off of Forest Road 305. Great to head to a spot with some confidence from a recommendation. There are many places we could have chosen to disperse camp and been perfectly happy, but not being familiar with a forest or the area at all makes it touch to get a sense of the options.

On the way out of Flagstaff, we pulled off the road to observe and marvel at storm clouds furiously gathering over the San Francisco peaks. Looked like Mordor from Lord of the Rings. While pulled off taking pictures I heard an elk call echoing across the meadow. Haunting and melodic sound that resounded like a bugle call with a sort of primal power, with birds chirping in the background. Great send off from Flagstaff.