While I’ve been in the USA for a three weeks, I’ve spent most of the time in Flagstaff, Arizona, up at a high elevation, enjoying the cool pine country. There were plenty of wonderful things to see and do, including sitting on the porch of the Summers’ townhouse and looking at the land around it!
Mt. Eldon was behind the house, which was a lovely place to view and a good place to walk.
With beautiful views and a wondrous group of cacti in bloom and fruit.
The Arboretum at Flagstaff
Ronnie drove up to Flagstaff and we went to the Arboretum at Flagstaff.It is a lovely place with nice wildflowers, pine forests, and butterflies.Yes, both in a butterfly house and those I happened to catch “in the wild.”
We learned about a few plants, like the one at the bottom called Old Man’s Whiskers (at the Arboretum, although later we saw it in Sunset Crater National Monument called another name). We also enjoyed the wild flowers in wet places and dry.
The butterfly house was a fun visit.
The herb garden with photos of marjoram and oregano.
The pine forest (with a few aspens), with a nice view of the San Francisco Peaks.
Campbell Mesa trails
Gael and a friend walked a marathon on the trails at Campbell Mesa. While they were walking miles and miles, I took a short, early morning walk. I took more than a few photos,including several of different types of trees since I’m writing a short set of articles about trees.
With a few close up pictures to show different aspects of the trees.
In addition to trees, there were flowers, mountains, clouds to enjoy, too. Two sets of the flowers.
And other types of wild flowers.
Lowell Observatory
This observatory is on Mars Hill (!) near the city of Flagstaff. Gael and I made a visit late one afternoon, in time to see these beautiful wild flowers on the grounds and listen to a couple of lectures before it was dark.
We were able to see some of the telescopes, but, surprisingly after weeks of sunny weather, the sky clouded over, and we could not see many stars through them. The telescope on the right was the one used to discover Pluto years ago.
We also saw the full moon on the summer solstice.
There is more to report from Flagstaff, but I’ll save some for a second post, interesting things like old volcano sites like Sunset Crater
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