Welcome to another exciting edition of ThrowBack Thursday! This week, we are “throwing back” a whopping THREE YEARS! Last week, we visited the super cool town of Jerome, followed by the tourist-clogged town of Sedona. Now it was time for something completely different: a volcano with three buttocks! So I left Sedona and headed north on Arizona state highway 89A to Flagstaff. This proved to be a scenic route, so I stopped to get a few photos along the way:

---

I must have had lunch in Flagstaff, and it must have been nothing special, because I don’t remember anything about it. That’s my one restaurant review for this trip. Anyway, continuing north from Flagstaff, my next stop was Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Sunset Crater is quite small and young as volcanoes go. It is believed to have gone from “birth” to “extinction” in less than two years. But all of that occurred less than a thousand years ago, so its “leavings” are still “fresh”. Thus, I was here not so much for the volcano itself, but for the surrounding area. That said, here is the volcano itself (and no, those aren’t saguaros growing on it:

---

After taking the photo above, I rotated 180 degrees and got this next picture from the same spot…

Yes that’s snow! In Arizona! You are looking at the Kachina Peaks, which top out at an elevation of 12,637 feet, so I’d guess they’re probably snowy every March. Note: these are the same snowy mountains we saw last week from Jerome. But let’s get back to Sunset Crater.

---

As I was entering Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the price of admission also included admission to the nearby Wupatki National Monument, which I had never even heard of. So, once my stroll around Sunset Crater was done, I continued north to Wupatki to consume what little sunlight remained. This turned out to be quite a nice accidental discovery, and I found myself wishing I had more time to spend there. What is Wupatki National Monument? It’s about pueblos. Think of the ancient cliff dwellings that exist in various places around the southwest USA. Wupatki is home to what might be considered prototypes of the cliff dwellings – similar building style, but built out on the plains. Here’s one now…

The photos above represent the dwelling known today as Wukoki. It’s just one of many such dwellings in Wupatki National Monument. The biggest of these dwellings, with about 100 rooms, is (not surprisingly) the one known as Wupatki. I managed to snap a few pics of this impressive antiquity as the sun set…

---

The next day, I was ill. I don’t recall the specifics of it, but I seem to remember a lot of phlegm and being COMPLETELY fatigued. I don’t know how much of it had to do with Parkinson’s, I just know I was in very bad shape. So bad that I seriously considered foregoing the day’s itinerary, in favor of just staying in the hotel all day. But I had only one thing on my itinerary that day, and that was Monument Valley, and for all I knew I’d never be there again. By mid-afternoon, I was feeling a little better, so I decided to give it a go. The weather was cold, cloudy, and very windy. This didn’t help. I tried standing outside for a minute to admire the view, but I couldn’t take it, so I went inside the visitor center. After some more time on my feet inside the visitor center, I was starting to feel quite a bit better, so I tried the outdoors again.

By now, the clouds had broken up. The wind was still quite strong, so the clouds were moving swiftly – this made for some phenomenal light/shadow effects on the massive rock formations. I was instantly inspired to good health! The Old Cheap-n-Crappy^(TM) camera must have been inspired as well, as I got some really good shots of the famous formations near the visitor center…

Having enjoyed the famous formations, I headed out to see what else this place has to offer. It has a lot!

Let me say for Monument Valley exactly what I said for Jerome last week:

THIS IS MY FAVORITE PLACE EVER! Okay I don’t want to oversell it, but this is a place that I almost didn’t go to, and it turned out to be SO MUCH MORE than I expected.

Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion! (Spoiler Alert: it’s the Grand Canyon)