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Old November 30th, 2013, 01:58 AM posted to rec.travel.usa-canada
Graham Harrison[_3_]
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Default Recommendations for 8 days in California


"Terry Pinnell" wrote in message
news
Correction!

4.1 With Yosemite and GC out of the equation (and the Sequoias NP,
both sections of which I visited with my wife last summer) it would
take me NW, increasingly further away from potential E and SE
alternative destinations.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK


I was rather taken with the SE corner of Arizona when we were there a few
years ago. We came from El Paso to Silver City NM and spent a couple of
nights so we could visit the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Not very far as the
crow flies but a rather slow road. Just outside Silver City there's a
large copper mine - one of those big pit mines, not beautiful but impressive
and on the road from Deming you pass the City of Rocks.

But I digress. From there we headed down to the Chiricahua National
Monument and took a short but really nice hike. We spent a night in
Tombstone - pure tourist trap with gunfights in main street every hour one
the hour (or that's what it felt like). Great fun if terribly tacky.
From there we went to Tucson largely because I wanted to look at the air
force boneyard and the Pima Air and Space Museum. However, we discovered a
nice drive up Mt Lemmon which is a ski resort but was nice in the late
afternoon in September. We flew out from Phoenix.

A good few years before that we flew into Phoenix and headed for the Grand
Canyon. We deviated to Montezuma Castle National Monument which is another
cliff dwelling (if you really want to see cliff dwellings in a spectacular
setting head for Mesa Verde in SW Colorado) and then Sedona which is, how do
I put it, "alternative" and "arty" then through Oak Creek Canyon to get to
Flagstaff. I'll ignore the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley and mention
instead Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "Shay" I seem to recall) which is one
of the places represents how the cliff dwellers began to move down into more
conventional buildings. You've also got the Petrified Forest and Window
Rock (a stream eroded a rock face and left a window through the rock) in
that part of the world. With the exception of Sedona and Flagstaff
(completely different atmospheres!) I'm not sure I feel any of the towns in
Arizona are atmospheric. Most are simply supply centres for the
surrounding area or as motel stops. Window Rock is an Apache tribal
headquarters, I seem to remember their headquarters being a (very nice)
collection of trailers and static mobile homes.

I've never used I-8 or I-10 from Arizona into California.