Flagstaff

If we wanted to move to Arizona, Flagstaff is where I would want to live -- at least, in the summer. They get lots of snow in the winter -- in fact, they're #2 of the metropolitan areas (if 52,000 people qualifies as metropolitan) for the amount of snow they get per year. (Syacruse, NY is #1). It's at 7000 ft, so quite cool this time of year. In fact, the RV park where we're staying just opened for the season last week. There are more ponderosa pines here than anywhere. And did they blow last night -- very windy -- kept us awake part of the night because our trailer rocked a bit.

But today was beautiful. We went to the Arboretum of Flagstaff, with an interesting tour about their efforts of planting native plants, ecological sustainability, water management. They also had a great talk and demonstration about raptors -- with an owl that flew over us several times as part of the demonstration, and a red tailed hawk, among other birds.

We also went to the Lowell Observatory, which was built in 1896. One of the original telescopes is still in use. We got to see the structure built for it -- very interesting -- and see how they move it into position. This is where Pluto was discovered, as well as some other amazing things they've researched. They had a neat Pluto-walk, too, that spatially informed us the distance between the planets.