Minnesota and Arizona 2023:
Day 7 - Mesa

	Tuesday, June 13, 2023: We were up at 6:30 AM, out of the hotel, and outside the drive-thru of our Del Taco when they opened at 7:00 AM.
	Mmmmm. Del Taco. We love you sooooo muuuuuch. Even your breakfast burritos.
	We headed north out of Flagstaff on US-89.
	North, you say? What's north of Flagstaff?
	Cameron, that's what, the eastern gateway to Grand Canyon National Park.
	We decided to head past the turn off to the Grand Canyon to look at the Little Colorado River.
	Hey! There's water in the Little Colorado. Yay!
	That's the canyon carved by the Little Colorado River. The area at the confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado is one the highlights of rafting down the Colorado, so seeing the Little Colorado always bring joy to our hearts.
	Just after 8:30 AM, we were at the eastern entrance of Grand Canyon National Park, ...
	... and there were only a few cars ahead of us in line. Nice!
	We drove straight to Desert View Watchtower overlook.
	Oooh. Check out these awesome pink flowers.
	Here's the namesake for the overlook: Desert View Watchtower.
	It was just before 9:00 AM, and the sign at the bottom of the stairs says that the second floor opens at 9:00 AM. No one was in line, and since the second floor overlook is usually very crowded, we thought this would be our shot to get up there when it opens, get some good pictures of the river, and then head back down before it fills up.
	We looked around at the artwork and crafts that were for sale while we waited for someone to remove the barrier to the stairs. A few minutes after 9:00 AM, an employee stopped by to ask us if we had our timed tickets since they were now required to go to the overlook. No one in line had tickets because there was no mention of timed tickets anywhere. When the employee said that there should be a table outside with someone handing them out, everyone in line behind us bolted outside to try to find this mystery person with tickets. After lamenting that there was plenty of room on the sign barring entry to the stairs to have mentioned timed tickets, we decided to give up on going upstairs.
	We perused the small gift shop in the tower for a few minutes, ...
	... and then headed outside to look for the river. We saw the person handing out tickets, and the earliest we could have gotten would have been for 9:40 AM, so we were very happy that we had given up.
	Ah, look at that canyon. And more importantly, can you see the Colorado River?
	We used the free telescopes to look forour lunch spot from the last river trip.
	It was the area just past the bend in the river beyond the shadow. Look for a a bit of beach and grass.
	Here's the view from that very spot looking back toward the Watch Tower, taken on our last river trip in 2022.
	We could almost still feel the rapids that were just downstream.
	Check out Debbie sporting her brand new Macalester sweatshirt. Gorgeous!
	As we made our way around the base of the tower, Tom thought he saw a condor coming in to land. It was big and black and had a red head, but since we didn't see it again, we're not sure what he saw.
	We were delighted to see that no one was on our favorite bench.
	It is a great place to sit, right at the edge of the canyon, with good views up and down the river. Here's the view downriver.
	Let's zoom in.
	Ok. Let's zoom waaaay in. You can see more of the river bending away westward toward Grand Canyon Village. This is the stretch of river where we last saw Desert View Watchtower in 2022 ...
	... as shown here on the river in 2022 at the entrance of the Upper Granite Gorge.
	Here is a different stretch of river that is much closer, so close that you feel like you should be able to walk down and get in the river. Why don't we have personal jetpacks yet?
	After sitting on the bench and talking about how much we enjoyed our river trip last summer, we headed back toward the parking lot and the much larger gift shop on the way.
	This one seems to carry a lot of jewelry, ...
	... but we passed on those and bought two Grand Canyon tea towels instead.
	At 9:45 AM, it was time to go. We got a last photo of some interesting plants, ...
	... and we were on the road, heading south toward Mesa.
	This is one of our favorite notifications when we are on a road trip. The app for our security cameras tracks our location to change modes of operation, and at some point on the trip it will put up a map showing how many times it has used our location and asking us to confirm that we are still willing to share our location with the app. It is such a great track of where we have been, and Debbie always tries to get a screen shot of it.
	By 11:00 AM, we were nearing Flagstaff, ...
	... passing the Flagstaff KOA where we had stayed on a road trip last fall. We appreciated their flag commemorating Pride Month.
	Is our Del Taco blocking your view?
	We were going to eat as much Del Taco as we could stand while we were in the land of Del Taco. Tom got the Epic Combo Beef and Bean burrito, and Debbie got the Epic Crispy Chicken and Guac burrito, hold the guac.
	Our next stop was Walnut Canyon National Monument. We had stopped here on our way home last October, but it was closed when we were here. We specifically planned today's activities to get us here while they were open.
	After a brief stop at the brand new restrooms, ...
	... we headed into the visitor center.
	There had been people living in this canyon as long as 10,000 years ago. They've found projectile heads, either from spears or arrows, dating back at least that far, and animal figurines dating back 4,000 years. Amazing.
	Here's a view of the canyon from right ...
	... to ...
	... left.
	There was a great walkway that led from the visitor center down into the canyon, ...
	... and across the valley into the distance.
	There were lots of items of archeological interest in the canyon, including cliff homes dating back to the 1200s.
	On our way out, we got a photo of the Mather plaque, which was our reason for stopping here.
	It was in really good shape, being a part of the 2015 Whiskeytown NRA series of castings. This one was dedicated on August 25, 2017, the 101st birthday of the National Park Service.
	This one is interesting because you can actually see the back of the plaque. Most are set in stone or concrete, so their backs cannot be seen.
	On the back near the bottom center is a smaller plaque with the date of the creation of Walnut Canyon National Monument, and an acknowledgement that this plaque was made possible by donations by the Cook and Guillet Families in 2015. There are four generations of National Park employees in these two intermarried families, including three superintendents and a regional director of the National Park Service. Amazing.
	We headed back toward Flagstaff, where our navigation system suggested that we take a route through the city rather than get stuck in traffic caused by an accident between Walnut Canyon and the junction with I-17.
	Since we were driving through surface streets, we decided to stop at the Target in downtown Flagstaff. We were planning to do some shopping when we arrived in Mesa this afternoon, but then we realized that it would be much nicer to shop in the cool temperatures in Flagstaff rather than the raging inferno that is southern Arizona.
	Fry sauce! Okay, technically it's called Mayochup, but that's fry sauce if we've ever seen it. We've never seen that in stores in the Midwest, so we had to get it.
	Mmmm. Cotton Candy Oreos. We got a good mix of staples like bread and meat and cereal, and some treats like Oreos and Hostess Cupcakes.
	As we were leaving the parking lot, Debbie saw that Grand Canyon Brewing had a tap room right across the street. We headed right there.
	We had decided that we weren't going to buy any beer when Debbie saw a six pack with a representation of Elves' Chasm on it. That went in the cart with the shot glass, pint glass, bottle opener, and sticker that we had already decided on.
	The Sunset Point rest area was still under construction so we couldn't stop there this time.
	As we headed to the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale, we noticed that the cool horsehead fountains were still there, but they were dry. It is the desert, after all.
	We got to the Railroad Park just before 3 PM, and it was almost completely deserted.
	We headed straight to the Merci Train. We had been here before and seen the boxcar, but we only took pictures of one side of it.
	This time, we got a photo of the back, ...
	... and another photo of the front.
	There was a nice bronze plaque in front of the boxcar that talks about the arrival of the boxcars from France in 1949, and restoration of the boxcar to 1940s condition and its placement here in 1989.
	Sightseeing complete, it was time to head to Higley Road in Mesa, ...
	... to the Casa de Paz condo complex, where we were going to be spending time cleaning up the condo that Debbie inherited from her father several years earlier.
	Here it is. Debbie's dad had bought the condo next door to his from a then-92 year old man, Ralph, with the understanding that he could live there until he moved out or died, which ever came first. No one expected that the then-92 year old would outlive both Debbie's dad and her stepmother. Now, at almost 99 years old, Ralph had just moved into a nursing home and we were here to clean up the place and put it up for sale.
	Here's the kitchen. Ralph's son, who also lives in the complex, and Ralph's daughter, who had flown in from Minnesota that day, had taken a few items that would be useful to Ralph in his new place, but everything else was still here to be sorted and packed.
	When Debbie's dad had purchased the condo from Ralph, he had paid extra with the understanding that he owned everything in the condo with a few named exceptions. So technically, everything here was ours, whether we wanted it or not.
	There would be lots of stuff to throw away, ...
	... lots to give away, ...
	... and lots and lots to clean up.
	Ralph had made some modifications to the place, like building this shelving unit into the kitchen hallway, ...
	... and building a spice rack on the back of the door to the kitchen.
	The refrigerator was empty which was nice, ...
	... as was the freezer. It would require a full cleaning though.
	The hallway closet had some cleaning supplies and other odds and ends in it.
	The front bedroom was mostly empty, ....
	... with only a few items remaining that Ralph didn't need or want.
	We had made an arrangement with a local thrift shop to pick up the furniture, but they wouldn't be coming for six days and there was a lot of it.
	Here's the patio, including a door-turned-into-a-table that was mounted on a hinge attached to the side of the shed.
	There were two sets of patio furniture, including the chairs on the left that had belonged to Debbie's dad and we gave to Ralph when we cleaned out the unit next door for sale several years ago.
	Ralph must have used this lovely rosemaling pot to water his patio plants.
	Here's the main bathroom, ...
	... and what we immediately started calling the "holiday closet" in the back bedroom.
	Here are some cupboards in the back bedroom, ...
	... and here is the back bathroom.
	While Ralph's daughter was busy working through Ralph's papers and other personal belongs in the back bedroom, we immediately got to work in the rest of the place. Our first priority was to try to declutter as much as possible and to make more room. We worked as long as we could, taking short breaks to eat cereal for dinner, and then going to bed in the front bedroom.   Day 8 >