day six

june 29, flagstaff, arizona, to phoenix, 294 miles.
27 or so years ago, in a world far, far away, i was covering baseball for the paper in bellevue, washington. each year, i drove to spring training in arizona. one year, terry tazioli, a good friend who also worked at the bellevue paper at the time, joined me for the trip south. along the way, we drove through a snow storm at the grand canyon; enjoyed laid-back sedona, arizona; discovered picturesque jerome, arizona; and marveled at montezuma's castle and montezuma's well, a couple of national monuments that contain dwellings used by folks here thousands of years ago. today, i revisited those places. sedona is no longer laid-back -- it has two starbuck's -- and jerome is no longer a tumble-down community perched precariously on the side of a hill in copper-mining country. the buildings have been renovated, it has been designated an historic site, and the tourists are out in force. but they're still good places to visit, and montezuma's castle is still amazing. the day ended with family and friends, first family at a dinner in chandler, arizona. an uncle and aunt, jack and shirley, have been in arizona for a while, and were joined about six years ago by one of their daughters, jackie, her husband, jack, and their kids. much more recently, one of their sons, jake, and his wife, jill, arrived. so we had dinner. and good conversation. then it was time to drive to sun city west and spend the night with mike stanton, who had been my boss at the seattle times before i drove him into retirement, and his wife, barbara. when i started planning this trip and contacted mike about the possibility of mooching a night's lodging, his first comment was something along the lines of, "what? are you crazy? it'll be like 110 degrees here that time of year." ok, so he got lucky, and it was 110 degrees. i finally turned on the air conditioning. on the way from chandler to sun city west -- it took over an hour to get from one to the other because the phoenix area has become huge -- it rained for a while and the wind blew strong. felt good. it was a good day. it was nice to see everyone and spend at least a little time with them. wish i could have stayed longer, but olivia will be in memphis in a few days, and i need to be there as well.
tomorrow: phoenix to socorro, new mexico...