Arizona Reunion Part 2: Sedona and Mesa Verde

The day after doing the Grand Canyon, it was planned for us all to go to Slide Rock near Sedona. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently, this is a big Arizona attraction. I have a bunch of friends who have gone out of their way to include a stop there while down in Arizona. Unfortunately, while it is a cool place, there were some drawbacks to the trip there.


On the way there, I rode with Mom, Paul, and Marinda. Mom had been conscripted to pick up a few lunch necessities from Walmart before we headed out to the rock, so we ended up running about 45 minutes behind the rest of the family. Slide rock is a popular state park, and we were there on a Saturday, so it was plenty busy. That meant that getting parking was pretty tricky, which took some extra time, in addition to some extra time spent going to the bathroom, the others changing, etc.

When we eventually found our way down to where the family was stationed by the river, we learned that Addison, my first cousin once removed, who is only 7 years old, had slipped on some lower rocks and split her chin open. Her mom, my cousin Danielle, and my Uncle Brad had already left to take her to seek medical attention. It ended up that she had to have seven stitches! Her accident had happened on a part of the rocks that looked safer because the water was shallow and seemed somewhat slower moving than the main rock slide area. In fact, over our time there, we saw a lot of kids especially in that area and observed a number of others slipping too. Who knew that an area that looked innocuous could be so dangerous? So that was a sad welcome to the scene.

The problem I faced personally was that I had forgotten to pack my swim suit, so my ability to enjoy the place was severely curtailed as a result. While it sucked that I couldn't actually try the slide out myself, I contented myself with keeping others like Grandma company and sometimes photographing some of the family going down the slides. It definitely helped that the setting was very beautiful.

While we were there, my bro-in-law, Paul, helped a guy out with a big cooler and found out that the guy went to BYU. This man talked to his wife, and having seen very pregnant Marinda, they decided to give them $100. So helping others at times pays off monetarily as well as spiritually, it seems!

Someday, I'd like to go back to Slide Rock when I can properly experience it. From what I saw of the family, it looked like the natural sluice was pretty thrilling, though the water was apparently very cold. Hopefully, if I do go back another time, no one will get hurt along the way!

That night, my Aunt Merina gave those who were interested an Italian cooking class. She and my Uncle Steve spent a semester in Italy recently, so she was showing us some of the dishes she learned there. It was fun preparing and eating this meal as a family. Not everyone was involved, but there were about 12 of us working on the dinner at one point or another. That sounds like a lot of cooks in the kitchen, which it was at times, but we were all spread around sufficiently to not be in each other's way most of the time.

I worked with Marinda at making bruschetta, which is a dish that I've made before, so I had a decent handle on it already, which reassured me that I wouldn't really mess it up. Of course, I mostly ended up chopping a ton of ingredients, so I started to wish I'd volunteered to do one of the more exciting recipes, like the homemade ravioli. Fortunately, I finished my chopping in time to help cutting some of the ravioli. That was pretty fun to do, so I was glad to have a chance to try it, though I can't say that I'm especially likely to try it again on my own any time soon.

Elisabeth was helping to make the dinner and Gerrit ended up falling asleep during the preparation, so my nephew, Elliott, was left in the care of my dad, who is not particularly renown for his childcare abilities. As a result, Elliott came toddling in to the kitchen a couple times and because I was in the direct line of sight from the living area, he made a beeline for me. Elliott has a charming habit of throwing himself at the legs of adults with his arms upraised when he wants picked up, so naturally I couldn't resist when he employed this method on me a few times. I'd always pick him up for a few minutes before returning him to Dad. When I finished my work, I abandoned the kitchen and took over entertaining Elliott for the duration.

It may not seem like that big a deal to most people, but I admit that for me, it is a tender thing to be loved in that way by any child. That a kid should look to me a trusted source of comfort is something I don't feel worthy of, but I treasure. I'm endlessly grateful that I have been given a place in the lives of my niece and nephews. They help to fill the hole within me while I wait hopefully for the opportunity to have children of my own. Even if I get that chance, I'm sure that those kids will always have an important hold on me beyond what I could ever do for them.

Not the best picture, but at one point, Elliott was having a blast hitting Gerrit's mouth while he made a sound than having Gerrit do the same to him. He liked the broken up sound a lot!

The dinner was all very delicious. The only problem was that everyone would have enjoyed having more of virtually everything! At Larsen reunions, there is always an abundance of talk, especially about topics like politics. While dinner was eaten, the main theme was about how everyone has an great distaste for Donald Trump, and there was much discussion on how he could be gotten rid of.

The next day, the whole of the morning was whiled away talking and basically piddling around. Some had already left and Steve and Merina were preparing to leave that afternoon, so I think that contributed to things grinding along slowly. We were also dithering about what to do for the day, and it wasn't until the afternoon that we finally decided to go down and see Sedona as Merina suggested. I'm glad we eventually came to that conclusion, though I wish that we'd done so earlier in the day as I would have liked having more time to see it.

By the time we got out, it was lunch time, so our first order of business was getting food. We traveled back past Slide Rock and continued on down to Sedona. The route ended up being even more scenic as we past what we'd already traveled. There was a gorgeous proliferation of lush green vegetation thanks to the river set dramatically against the rising red rock mountains. The whole area was quite breath-taking.

In Sedona proper, we ended up eating at the Cowboy Club, a restaurant that occupies an old tavern frequented by many movie stars of the '50's like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. The food there was also interesting. We all enjoyed the cactus fries, made from real cactus, and the special prickly pear dipping sauce they came with. Mom and I split a sampler platter, from which we both enjoyed some buffalo skewers and cilantro flat bread. Mom and some of the others also worked on the included rattlesnake sausage, but I wasn't keen on that idea, so I forwent the delicacy. Apparently, no one really liked it, so I guess I didn't miss much!

As we only had about an hour and a half left before needing to head back to Flagstaff, people were divided on what to do. My uncle Layne's family decided to go driving around a bit in hopes of catching a short hike, while Uncle Lance's family and my family decided that we just wanted to check out some of the cute shops in downtown Sedona. I wish we'd had time to do both hiking and shopping as I'm sure Sedona had a lot more to offer than we could accomplish in that short time, but I was happy enough to shop, since we saved some time there already being downtown.

There were a number of interesting shops there, including a few that were odd new age-y type stone places. I loved getting to see some of the beautiful, vibrant tiles that were sold there. They really screamed the Southwest to me. I'd been interested the whole trip in some of the gorgeous Southwest Indian pottery and jewelry, and there were some very nice specimens there, though naturally they were all super expensive since Sedona is an overpriced tourist town.

Still, it was very enjoyable just taking in the sights in a relaxed manner, though we would have all liked it much better had it not been so hot. Sedona is a fair amount hotter than Flagstaff was because it is a lower elevation. We were all kind of melting at times. After exploring the town for a while, it was time to head back.

That night, we went to one of Flagstaff's big attractions, Lowell Observatory. I'd been looking forward to going there and I was not disappointed. And yet, I was a little disappointed at first. We had all hurried to get there in time for a certain show, but after we'd sat through the first few minutes of it, I could tell that it wasn't something that Molly could enjoy. It was basically just someone talking with just a small, rather lackluster visual as the only thing to spice it up. So when Molly got restless, I took her outside to give her a break.

Fortunately, they'd set up the telescopes in the courtyard, so we had something interesting to do. I don't know how much she liked it, but Molly got to see Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon. I don't think it rocked her world, but she seemed to enjoy it well enough. My favorite was seeing the Moon. Because it's close, you could see a lot of detail on it and it was very large. It was cool checking out the craters and seeing the terminator. Saturn was also really fun because you could see the ring around it. Seeing 4 of Jupiter's moons around it was also pretty fun. Poor Mars was the only boring one, Supposedly, some people see the red in it, but I couldn't see it at all, though I looked at it a couple of times.

When the others came out from the show, we went up to the biggest telescope and got a look at M13. That was awesome to see. The view took in so many stars very clearly. Molly fell asleep while we were waiting to see M13, so Gerrit had to carry her. After that, everyone else wanted to see the planets we'd already looked at. The Moon was no longer where it could be seen with the telescopes, so I was glad that we'd caught it earlier.

Eventually, it was getting close to the observatory's closing time, but we figured we could still make it in time to see the telescope used to discover Pluto. It was a little bit of a walk to get to it, so Mom, Marinda and Paul, and some of the others didn't make it over there. The walk was nice, in my opinion, because along the way, there was a scale model of the solar system. That was fun to see. Its pretty striking just how far out the outer planets really are compared to the inner planets.

Seeing the telescope itself was very cool. The guide there talked about how that telescope had been specifically designed to search the sky for the gravitational disturbance that ended up being Pluto. Whereas the telescope we saw M13 with was built to zero in on very small parts of the sky, the telescope used to find Pluto was made to sweep large portions of the sky, allowing the scientists to locate Pluto's general area, then pinpoint it with the other telescope.

The story of the scientist who discovered it, Clyde Tombaugh, was also quite interesting. He was basically just an amateur who had a long fascination with astronomy. He was eager to work for a a real observatory and was offered a position with Lowell Observatory, though basically as a second-class citizen. He was essentially in charge of maintenance, performing tasks like shoveling snow from the observatory hatches. When he completed his other tasks, he was given some time to make his own observations after the full-fledged scientists were finished with their work. His success despite his disadvantages is an inspiring testament to what passion for your work can motivate.

The next day, it was time for everyone to leave. We finished cleaning up and got on our way as early as possible. The plan was to travel through Dad's mission areas on the Navajo reservation before staying in Cortez that evening. Grandma had stayed with us, so she was in her car with Paul and Marinda while I went with Mom and Dad in their car.

Canyon de Chelly

Dad said being in the same car as him didn't really matter because he didn't have much to say about anything that people hadn't heard before, but I still think it was better to hear his reminiscences first-hand. There were stretches where he reflected on things like hitch-hiking along those lonely roads and such that were interesting. He also talked about tidbits like the fact that the Navajos all prefer driving trucks and that most families have collections of non-working cars. Even things like the fact that people who had tepees on their property were usually Peyote eaters were interesting to me.

We went through all of the areas Dad served in, White Cone, Ganado, Chinle, Teec Nos Pas, and Shiprock. The funny thing was, though things had changed very little from Dad's memories from the '70's in general terms of living conditions, culture, etc, almost nothing that he specifically remembered was still there. For example, we were banking on eating at a popular restaurant he remembered, but there was absolutely no trace of it when we got there. The church he remembered in Chinle is also completely gone.

After mission picture restaged with Spider Rock in background

There were a couple exceptions, though. He had suggested that we really needed to see Canyon de Chelly while we were there. Some of the others were thinking we should maybe skip that for the sake of time, but I'm really glad we didn't. It was very beautiful, and a few of us liked it even better than the Grand Canyon. Dad recalled playing soccer with his zone down on the floor of that canyon. We even took a picture there that was intended to parallel one Dad took with Layne and Lance at the end of his mission. Grandma seriously wanted to do a tour of the canyon bottom, and I'm certainly keen on that too, but we had no time for such things on that day. Maybe one day, I'll get back that way.

We also found things in Teec Nos Pas fairly consistent with Dad's memory. A trading post he remembered was still there and is now partly owned by a member who thought she remembered Dad. It was fun talking with her and learning about the history of that little town. Even there, though, I still didn't find any of the jewelry or pots I was interested in for a reasonable price. Grandma was looking for a Navajo rug, but didn't have any success either. There was a nice little church right near the trading post that had been built not that long after Dad left on the ground where they'd met during his time. There was even a trailer still near there that was like the one he'd lived on while serving there. At the church, we even got to see a small colony of prairie dogs, so that was fun.

The church at Teec Nos Pos

The last stop was Shiprock. It was a much bigger affair than most of the little one-horse towns we'd been through. I had a roommate in college who was from Shiprock, so that made seeing that town of greater significance to me. We ate at a Navajo restaurant there, but I didn't order anything because it seemed expensive to me. It turned out it was good I didn't order, because the Navajo Tacos the others got were HUGE. Everyone was trying to foist there food on me, so I had plenty to eat.

After spending the night in Cortez, we left the next morning to go see Mesa Verde. At the Visitors' Center, we learned that we should have planned our visit better in advance. It turned out you had to purchase tickets to go on the tours through the various sites. By the time we got there, almost everything was sold out for tours before we needed to start heading back to Utah Valley. We found one ticket for the Balcony House on the last tour before I would have to leave with the others, and Mom and Dad bought 2 Balcony House tickets for an hour later, since they weren't under the same time crunch as the rest of us.

The plan was that I'd go by myself on the earlier tour, but when we talked to the ranger guiding the tour at the meeting area, he indicated that there would doubtless be no problem fitting an extra couple people on my tour as long as they had tickets for some point during the day. That was welcome news, so it ended up being settled that Mom, Paul, and I took the tour together, Dad having graciously given up his ticket for Paul's sake.

The tour was ridiculously awesome! It really was my favorite part of the whole trip, despite some terrifying moments. The Balcony House tour was probably not completely booked the whole day like the others because it is the most difficult and scary of all the tours. It required quite a bit of climbing and some careful scampering as well.

After hiking down the cliff wall for a bit, our guide showed us one of the small seep springs that provided the water used by the Pueblos. There really wasn't much water to speak of, so it was sobering to think of an entire community living off such meager moisture. From there, we had to climb a 30-foot ladder to get in to the house itself. I don't like heights, so this proposition wasn't thrilling to me to begin with, but was made much worse by the fact that there was a woman right in front of me on the ladder who was really struggling. She took forever to get up, so I had to spend a lot more time on the ladder than I wanted to. Had I been able to scale it rather quickly, I don't think it would have been that big a deal, but hanging on there for an extended period freaked me out a lot. Thankfully, we all made it up safely somehow.

The Balcony House is so named because it does have a nice balcony space at the front of it, a unique feature among those dwellings. It's speculated that the balcony may have been used for retaining animals or maybe just children for safety. That feature may have been more needed in this home, because unlike the other settlements, there's evidence that the Balcony House residents were under some kind of distress. One example of that was that a wall had been built dividing two sections of the home after it's original construction. The wall had a doorway when it was first built, but the doorway was later filled in, showing that access to that area was becoming more and more limited over time.

We crawled around to the back connecting tunnel that led to the house's two kivas. Those were essentially the living rooms of the house where families would gather, perform religious ceremonies, etc. The kivas at one time would have been covered with wooden bough ceilings, but are now just open. Above those were several smaller rooms, one of which still has a nice petrograph faintly visible on the wall. My interpretation of it is that it was a stylistic depiction of mountains. Whatever it represented, it was cool to see paint that has survived on that wall for about 1000 years!

Here's the wall with the sealed
up door in the middle

Mom and Paul starting to
scramble up a section

You can see the petrograph
at the top of this wall

As we went out what would have originally been the entrance of the house, we saw another distinct sign of a distressed populace. The tunnel that formed the entrance had been purposely lowered such that only one person can crawl through it at a time. Obviously, the inhabitants were trying to limit access to the house for some reason. Crawling through the tunnel myself convinced me that doing that at least twice a day would definitely be something to avoid doing, if possible. For some reason, the original inhabitants found it necessary.

After going through the tunnel, it was time for the most harrowing part of the tour, in my opinion. This involved climbing up another 60 feet of bare rock face, sometimes with ladders and other times, just using chains and some very widespread toe notches. Getting up this gauntlet was, for me, extremely terrifying. There were no especial safety features and the going was often quite difficult. The first 32 foot ladder was a cakewalk in comparison. Fortunately, this time I was able to power through it at my own pace rather than get stuck behind someone! That was my only saving grace. With my distinct fear of heights, it was horrific, but didn't seem to bother Paul or Mom all that much.

Mom emerges from the last ladder

Despite the terror of the final ascent, the tour of Balcony House was the highlight of the whole trip for me. The tour was truly fascinating and the sights spectacular. I left with an immense respect for those people who constructed this community and dealt with such difficult circumstances to live there. They must have been an incredibly hardy and intelligent group, finding ways to live and thrive in such harsh conditions. They were a testament to the greatness of the human spirit, in my opinion!

One of the things our ranger shared was quite interesting; he informed us that a large portion of Mesa Verde has still not been carefully surveyed, so there are likely many other unknown settlements among the cliffs. This is because there isn't usually the funding required to do a proper survey of various areas. The only time that funding is granted is after a wildfire, when they are legally required to do a survey to ascertain if there has been appreciable damage to any ruins. Often, this is how new sites are discovered. It's exciting to think that great new discoveries at Mesa Verde could come to light unexpectedly. I just hope that no damage to the ruins is required to bring them to light!

I really wish we had a lot more time at Mesa Verde. Of the national parks I've been to, it definitely ranks among my favorite. Not only is the natural setting beautiful, there is also the added appeal of fascinating human artifacts and heritage. I really want to go back sometime and do the whole place justice, going on all the tours and checking out all the park has to offer.

As our time was basically exhausted by the tour, we had just enough time to go and get a distant view of Cliff Palace before it was time to go our separate ways. Then it was a straight shot back to Utah Valley for us while Mom and Dad headed towards Santa Fe. We didn't arrive in Provo until around 8 PM. Paul and Marinda had offered to let Grandma stay with them for the night, but she wanted to push on, so poor Grandma probably didn't get home until 1 or 2 AM. I was worried about her making such a long and lonely trip on her own at night, but she made it safely, so all was well. I'm glad that she was able to come along with us to enjoy a few more interesting sights.

The whole trip was filled with a lot of great memories. I both got to see some incredible places and spend time with a lot of amazing people. It doesn't get any better than that! I'm already looking forward to next year, when we will be heading back to the Pacific Northwest to check out Olympic National Park.