Flagstaff 2024 July 04--05

2024 July 04

Found myself invited to go to Flagstaff, Arizona, USA for July 4 by an associate named Jay. It was a great excuse to escape the heat of the valley down in Phoenix. Jian and Paul would watch Beilee for a couple days while Bebe would join Jay and I to get out of the house.

Jay picked us up around 1000 on the 4th and we headed up towards Flagstaff with a stop for lunch in Sedona. We wanted to hit up some Thai restaurants but all were closed, so we settled on a nice Sichuan restaurant that Bebe and I had been to before and ate family-style. Sedona was beautiful as always, though packed full of tourists enjoying the long holiday weekend. The three of us piled back into Jay’s car and drove up Arizona State Route 89A the rest of the way to Flagstaff.

Jay’s car pulled into Flagstaff arond 1500 and the three of us checked into the hotel. After resting for a bit and freshening up we headed downtown. The weather was substantially better than Phoenix or Sedona, both of which had been in the triple-digits Fahrenheit-wise. Flagstaff, with its higher latitude and elevation, was about 20 degrees cooler. —Though, just as sunny and dry.

Downtown was fairly lively, as far as Flagstaff goes (it’s a small university town); That’s not to say that it was very lively, however. Jay concluded tha the majority of university students probably left town for the long weekend despite any July 4 festivities happening around Flagstaff.

The main event seemed to be a jazz band concert amongst some restaurants and bars. There was a reasonable congregation of folks standing around enjoying the music. No fireworks in the town, however, over fire concerns. There was an Indian reservation casino 20 miles outside of town that advertised a fireworks display, but we had no intentions of venturing out that far. Instead, we opted to find a bar to sit down and enjoy a couple beers outside.

After some beers, bar appetizers, and great conversation, our trio went walking and wandering town for a while. We passed by the concert again, enjoying about 15 minutes of performance until the band concluded. I stopped into a science and astronomy store interested in their telescopes and optical mounts (they didn’t have anything I would have purchased). Exploring through the downtown of Flagstaff in this climate was nice. It’s a small, easy town to walk, and the last time I’d done it was during winter when everything was covered in snow and freezing.

Come evening time we were starting to get hungry. It being summer, the sun didn’t set until late. So, despite the daylight outside, it had to have been around 1930 or so by this point. Our exploring took us to a corner sitting right adjacent to historic Route 66 that runs though a flank of downtown Flagstaff where a few restaurants and bars sat. One of these restaurants had their doors and windows open with a folk band performing live music. We were drawn inside and quickly seated at a table. I had a couple more beers and ordered a steak. Bebe, in rare form, ordered tacos. Personally, I liked this folk band more than the concert jazz band we’d seen earlier.

By the time Bebe, Jay, and I left the restaurant the sun had well set. It was, indeed, finally, dark. The three of us walked back around downtown, widely re-tracing our former routes and steps from earlier in the day, but now enjoying the genuinely cool air and night character of Flagstaff after dark.

Post a stop at Jay’s car to retrieve some sweatshirts (it did, in fact, get that cold) we made our way to a basement bar that was having an amateur stand-up comedy routine. We watched the show, mostly getting laughs out of how terrible the comedians were, and I finished a couple PBRs.

Thereafter, we decided to call it a night. I was done drinking, Jay wasn’t drinking, and Bebe was getting tired. We had plans to go to a mountain the following day for a hiking excursion before returning home to Phoenix (which, itself, is about a 2–3 hour drive). Figured it’d be better to get a good night of sleep vs. hiking on a hangover. So, leaving the bar, to Jay’s car we walked to drive back to our hotel.

2024 July 05

Decent enough sleep with a collectively lazy and unmotivated start to the morning. The three of us finally left the hotel around late morning, nearer to lunch time. We’d showered and changed into outdoorsy attire and footwear (although, Bebe opted for some black spandex exercise outfit with white Yeezies). We found a highly-rated cafe downtown across the railroad tracks opposite Route 66 and waited over an hour for our food to arrive. The food was decent, albeit overpriced. It served its purpose as good nutrition before hiking, at least.

Jay drove again, taking us outside of town to a dirt road that snaked its way up towards a mountain. The trail we originally wanted to take was closed and blocked off, but there was a dirt parking lot alongside the road which had other trails shooting off it. We checked the maps and settled on a route, collecting our belongings from Jay’s car before settling off into the forest.

Hiking was fantastic! Definitely the highlight of the weekend for me. It was beautiful everywhere and the climate was brilliant. The trail we took went through a forest and wrapped around the base of a mountain, meandering over some valleys and into and around the bases of adjacent peaks.

The total hike ended up being almost 6 miles with a fair degree of elevation across, though at gentle grade. Fresh air and plentiful nature: through woods, over grass-covered hills, and past groups of wildflowers. At one point we came across a doe sleeping, which we scared by our approach, driving it to stand up and bolt into the brush.

We finally came across the road we’d driven up down after cutting across a large grass field. We opted to follow the road up the rest of the way back towards the parking area vs. backtracking along the trail. Jay and I had been handling the hike without issue, but Bebe was growing tired and we’d exhausted out supply of water.

Reaching the parking lot we extracted some water bottles from Jay’s trunk and relaxed for a few minutes before packing things away and heading out. We stopped at a gas station leaving Flagstaff before the drive back South to Phoenix.