TriNetre - Archive for April 15, 2003
(no longer updated)
April 15, 2003
Trip to Arizona
[Misc.]
@ 12:10 PM
This blog is back, as I flight to shrug off the jet lag. Had a great time at Phoenix, Arizona where I attended the IEEE IPCCC 2003 Conference. A small writeup on trip to Sedona and nearby places follows:
8th April 2003
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I took a city tour organized by Southwest Tours, in the morning. The tour finished by 1 p.m. Since the rest of the day was free, I teamed up with Irena, a girl from Australia/Macedonia (who was there for the same conference, was staying in the same hotel and whom I met during the city tour) to rent a car and explore the Sedona area. Neither of us had any experience in using a right hand drive car. Nor did we have any idea how to drive an automatic gear car. Anyway, we were on the roads by 2 p.m. We hit the highway 17 all the way to the Montezuma Castle National Monument exit. Irena did all the driving, since we decided I would drive back. It was a nice drive, filled with scenic beauty all the way. It is amazing to see the transition of the landscape from a cactus filled desert land to a land full of plateaus and hills.
The castle is a five storied, 20-room dwelling place build by the Sinagua farmers early in the 12th century. It is astounding how these people could build structures so high into the cliff. After spending time at the monument, we tried to get back south to highway 17 to visit the ruins at Tuzigoot. We ended up missing the exit, which was nearer than what we though, and had to get out and get back again towards north. We reached Tuzigoot at around 4:45 p.m., with just 15 minutes before it was going to close. Since it was this late, the guy at the ticket counter allowed us to visit without purchasing the tickets. Running through the trail, we took in the majesty of the location and the scenery of the hills around. Tuzigoot is the remnant of a Sinagua village built between 1125 and 1400. It crowns the summit of a long ridge that rises 120 feet above the Verde valley. Since we had no time, we skipped reading all the details put up on the sides of the ruins. After that we took the smaller road Alt. 89 that took us to Jerome. Jerome is the site of one of the first copper mines in Arizona and is called the Ghost village. Hoping to see something nice, we were disappointed when Jerome turned out to be just a normal small village. So we hit the roads again, Sedona being the next destination. The light was failing fast, but the red stones at Sedona were still looking great. The sunset just added to the beauty. By the time we finished the basic sights, it was so dark that we decided that there was no point finding the Chapel of Holy Cross since we would not be able to see anything. Dinner at the first Pizza Hut we saw turned out to be a disappointment. After waiting for an incredible 45 minutes for an order of medium Super Supreme, we were not in any mood to appreciate the taste. We set out again, with the intention of hitting road 179 that would take us to highway 17 south back to Phoenix. Accidentally, we found ourselves on road 89A that took us further north to Flagstaff. It really is amazing that there is absolutely no direction on this road all the way up to about 3 miles to Flagstaff. No indication as to what road this was nor any word as to where it was heading. We found out our folly from a couple whose car had broken down and whom we dropped at the next phone booth. Realizing the mistake we took the exit at Flagstaff and this time took the highway 17 toward south correctly. We changed drivers and I drove the whole highway back for about 2 hours at 80mph (shhhh, don’t tell anyone, the speed limit is 75 mph). We got back to the hotel by around 11:30 in the night. |
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