Latest / Arizona Unscripted / Episode 31: 🌵 Arizona Unscripted - The Ultimate Arizona Staycation!!
Transcript
- Arizona Unscripted: Welcome to Arizona Unscripted. I'm your host Bart alongside my wonderful co-hosts Catherine and Jim. From time to time we'll be joined by special pop-in guests and hosts from communities all across the Grand Canyon state. Arizona Unscripted is all about Arizona, its people, its places, its events, and the local issues that shape our everyday lives. From small towns to big cities, from hidden gems and great local food to history, culture, and the challenges facing our communities, we're here to have a real conversation with real Arizonians. Our goal is simple, to celebrate what makes Arizona unique while bringing together voices from every corner of the state. So whether you're a lifelong resident, a newcomer, or just someone who loves Arizona, we hope you'll feel right at home. So grab a cup of coffee or something cool. Sit back and join us as we explore the people, places, and stories that make Arizona one of the most fascinating states in America. Welcome to Arizona Unscripted. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to my wonderful co-host, Diane. Thank you, Bart. It is so great to be back here again. And we're here with Catherine and Jim. And Jim is going to introduce our special guest today. Yeah, today we got Daniel telling us about his staycation. Sounds like a great time. Tell us what you got, Daniel. Okay. So of course, I live down in Graham County, Southeast Arizona, but I had friends in Oak Creek, which is south of Sedona. It's basically still Sedona. But they said, hey, why don't you take a week, come up, stay in our you know, guest house, and we will we're doing a staycation with the grandkids. And ⁓ the grandkids live ⁓ a little further away down in ⁓ Cottonwood. And so I says, okay, that sounds like fun. A lot of things we wanted to talk about. So I did that. And I got there. It's a lovely room I had to myself. And ⁓ they've been taking care of the grandkids a lot. And mom was needing to take classes, and so it just was giving everybody breaks. And what I discovered by taking staycation. Was it you on any given day we could do a number of different little things, and that anybody, and particularly the grandkids, didn't necessarily want to do everything every day with everybody. And so we got to be very adaptable. And it just worked out really nicely. And so we started out. ⁓ Went first and it was one of my one of my favorites. We went to the Verde Valley Archaeology Center. ⁓ again, that's just a little south, a little bit south of of Oak Creek. And it's a private, nonprofit archaeological museum. And they had lovely things. There wasn't there wasn't so much of everything that you couldn't see at all. It was very well laid out with explanations of where the stuff came from and why it was there and the histories of them and the people who were running it were would give their little tours and it was just a lot of fun and saw just just an an enormous number of wonderful little things. So that was I can definitely say the Verity Valley Archaeology Center is worth going to. Hey Daniel. Daniel. ⁓ go ahead, Gaston. We both got a question. I was gonna say, was was that in Camp Verde? That's in Eden. I believe it's Eden. I I think it's Eden. I may have all these notes here. Yeah. There's a really ⁓ a ⁓ historic Native American historical site just outside of Camp Verde. Yes. Yeah. I just wondered if it was there. So it's something different. Something other than Yeah, it's different. It's not, you know, it's not the ⁓ the big water supply. I can't think what it's called right at the moment. ⁓ it's it's not Montezuma's castle. It's not any of those things, it's just a museum of its own. Those other things are all there too. ⁓ there's so much down there, that's for sure. So many different things. You can pick and choose and you absolutely don't have to exhaust yourself trying to do them all. She can go home and rest. So I was gonna say I follow Daniel on social media and that makes you sound really like an influencer, Daniel. ⁓ so I follow Daniel in social media and you had pictures and you had pictures. So is this like the skulls and all of the things? Well, that's one of the other things. That's the other thing. Okay. There's more. There's so much more. I'm gonna have to really power through for you. Do tell. So then doing that, of course, everybody's hungry. Kids are always hungry, the little kids. So stopped off there in Eden at the Wingfield Bread Company and sandwiches. It's a little family operated place. Just lovely people, great bread. We made a special trip just to go buy bread there one day. And and the grandkids there are serving you. And it's just a lovely energy. So then we went to the copper museum, and that's in Clarkdale. And it's it talks about the copper companies and the smelters, but just an enormous number of antiques and really amazing copper products, and how copper is used, and how you know, even lots of history about how many it's a Beautiful building, and they're about to put in another bigger one. So which so those those can take some time to get through. But those that museum is well worth chep checking out as one of your staycation afternoon visits or day. Did you discover why we're the copper state? Well, basically just because we've got so damn much of it. And we're the number one producer of copper in the country. Yeah, and then tying in with how much ⁓ of all that the the history of the different places and the different mines and the smelters and all this is all tying in together if you take a whole week to spend around going around the whole area. ⁓ but just to so that copper museum is another place well worth going to check. So then of course. People are hungry, so we go to the Bruja. ⁓ it's ⁓ called a bakery and a social eatery and market. Lovely little place with specially cocktails for the adults. And that's in Cornville. So these are all places you can hit one after the other. then ⁓ we also went to the Merkin's Vineyard in Cottonville, Cottonwood, and ⁓ that's a hilltop winery and cretoria and that's Italian food. Great salads from all their locally sourced teams that they make to grow their vegetables and stuff that they're serving in there. I love Italian food. I'm gonna have to go check it out. it's it's it's it's there, and it's a little upscale compared to all these other places we ate. But it's it's worth plus if you like to do the wine tours, they're great. Yeah, the wines now they grow down there. ⁓ they never used to do that, but now the wineries have become a real big thing in the Verde Valley. Then then we went then we went to the sculatorium. It's a new little private museum up in ⁓ I'm not gonna get it, I'm not gonna say it right. ⁓ Trying to call it Jehovah. That's a Jerome. Jerome. And it's private. And it was amazing the skulls in there. I sent pictures of my son. They've got some human ones, real human ones, scary things that people have done to them. They've got everything. ⁓ they've got giraffe skulls. They've got my son sent me, says, I want you to get me one of those hippopotamus skulls. That's something to see. And it's a so if you like a little bit of the macabre stuff, that skull museum was really pretty fascinating. ⁓ Jerome was a ghost town for you know for a while, so that fits right in with Jerome. Yep, yep. It's a whole vibe. It is, it is. ⁓ so so ⁓ then ⁓ We stopped and ⁓ 'cause they had to take me once in Seduna Sedona, ⁓ Layla's bakery and cafe with their specially as European laminated puff pastries and ⁓ and I just awesome pastries to go try if you once you're in Sedona itself. Well, everybody a lot of people have been to Sedona and they're all Caught up in the touristy trap areas. And there's a lot of things that don't fall under that category quite. That can be a lot of fun. ⁓ you're making me really hungry, Daniel. Yeah, well, it's that time. It's dinner time. I'd help you do something about that if I could, but then ⁓ also in Sedona itself. We went to the Sedona Heritage Museum, and it's quite a large ⁓ and they've got self-guided tours and in particular like the Jordan House, where you get ⁓ a lot of examples of what it was like living in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Sedona, and there's On the walls, they've got histories of specific families and how they got there and what they did. And it was quite interesting from the ones who say started the first ⁓ vineyard and the first winery in Arizona and how that got snafu when ⁓ they decided alcohol was a no-no anymore. And they lost, started losing it. And so the husband ended up going to prison because he was trying to sell anyway. So the mom was trying to save it all and they managed to hold on to it until it all got reversed again. But and then of course there's all the things about how the Native Americans really got tricked out of their land. There's all those stories. The full spectrum of what it was like. And it's it's quite a it was super hot. So the self-guarded port where outside of the the the main house, original house, you know, they had ⁓ their fruit packing sheds because the Jordan it was this is the Jordan House, the Heritage Museum. And they had ⁓ selling apples. That's how they got started selling apples to the mines. So all that now, but and I definitely don't want to lose because one of the biggest treats was going to the Lowell Observatory in ⁓ I want to go. You do want to go. I do. That was fascinating. And they say, ⁓ you got a plan on three or four hours. I don't know. Give yourself six to eight hours. Go later because it's open late. And ⁓ Flagstaff is a dark city, dark sky city, or because of the observatories, an amazing history in there. And you go in, and there's all kinds of exhibits, there's all kinds of of interactive things for kids to do. They've got The cafeteria, they've got everything you need there. Spend, I would figure it'd probably take you two days to do it really. Sounds like a good place to go on a date with yourself or with somebody else. ⁓ yeah. Well, actually, it was nice because I had a guide who'd been there many, she'd been there many times. I'm gonna tell a little bit of that story quickly. ⁓ that's my hostess, and we Then ⁓ of course Lowell, there's all of his original telescopes that he built himself. They've got it's the structures and the and how they built these things and the the observatories themselves were they're beautiful to look at. And every different place you went, I mean it's quite a large area with different buildings and different structures. ⁓ Where they had people in there who would give you your little personal tours and guides you there. They're very knowledgeable, very friendly. And I gotta tell you, you can geek out like crazy in there. If you're in astronomy and science and all these things, the whole place is just one awesome thing to observe after another. And one of the special treats is that my hostess. was part of the team that built ⁓ it's called the ⁓ New Horizon spacecraft. What? It was launched in 2006, kind of looked like a big cheese wedge with a with a a dish antenna on top and it was sent out. And she was part of the team that were doing all of the software and all the things that made the radio work. This was the spacecraft. Like I said, they launched it in 2006. They made the the first historic flyby of Pluto and those beautiful pictures. Which she took me up and showed me the big, the big wall picture of. Pluto. And of course I'd take a picture of her and say, I you know. I love Pluto. And it was and that that's up on the top floor. And if we were started there and worked our way down and went around because we wanted to go out and see things. And they had tried to go one evening before so they could s go to the telescopes and they could go to the ⁓ What do they call it? The observat Observatory? Well, there's there's a room that they can open up the ceiling and you've got heated seats to sit in and look at the dark sky. What? And then they've got laser ⁓ a laser show to show you where to look while they're describing what it is you're looking at up in the sky. Like an observation room. The observate it's big when there's like 150 seats all heated. So you can go in the winter. As long as it's not snowy, it's not raining, as long as it's not super cloudy. And when they went before, we didn't stay for evening this time because the kids want to go home. Well, it sounds like even though you didn't go to some big fancy destination place, your staycation was amazing. And and then the that spacecraft is still up that the Our current governor's dis government has decided they're going to cancel that. They're not going to pay any more for it because they don't think it's worth it. ⁓ so far it's travel when it went by Pluto, it had already traveled over two billion miles. ⁓ signals we're having to travel two billion miles to to go back and forth. from us to there and get all that information. And it's still operating. They actually turned it off for a year. Right now it's five point nine billion miles away. Whoa. And it's still operational and still sending signals. Science, this is the geeky part of the science things. Now if you stay in the evening, they're also they have one section outside where they have The most amazing telescopes, the s size of your well, basically they're so big that they're on big wheels. They wheel them out and they will set them up so you can look at different planets. Assuming the weather is allowing it. And and when they went, unfortunately the fires had started and it was too smoky and they just shut everything down. So they missed that one. ⁓ so there's a good reason why I'm like to go back. So if you're a geeky person, that Lowell Observatory is like I said, if you like science and you like the pictures and you like all these things, that is a full day, two day trip. So we can fill our brains and fill our bellies. You can do yeah. And but like I said, the fun part of a staycation was that you weren't locked into having to do something all day long where the kids particularly are already tired, they didn't want to do it anymore. Yeah. And and we could take breaks from each other because of course the grandparents are already taking care of the kids a lot. So that was nice for them to hang out with an adult for a while. So it was ⁓ I love it. I can tell you that that for any place where you're going If you take time to look and a bunch of these things were things that my friends had not done themselves because they were too busy doing the other thing. So they thought, well, what would we like to see this time? Where would we like to go in? Where would we like to do this different as part of education to to expand the awareness of your immediate environment? Well, I love it because I feel like this all ties in so well to our talks about road trips and getting across Arizona and getting out of the house and going and doing something and participating with the world around you with the people that you care about. I can see why Catherine wanted to have you on to talk about the subject. I love it. Well not only that, but I have to just chime in here. I moved to Cottonwood, Arizona in 1976. From Monterey, California. ⁓ wow. And then a few months later I moved to Cornville. Your Cornville that you saw, Daniel, is extremely different from the Cornville that I moved to in 1977. ⁓ my gosh. Now it's all golf courses and golf course homes. When I lived there, there was really nothing. ⁓ there was Casey's Corner, ⁓ a little grocery store gas station, and They had a counter where they served beer and that was it. It's a completely different situation now, but ⁓ what a beautiful area the Verde Valley is. What a what a gorgeous part of Arizona. Well thank you for telling us about all those fabulous places. And Arizona has great sunsets, but they're special in that area for sure. That's true, Jim. They are with those red rocks. It really ⁓ enhances the sunset for sure. The sunset and the energy. It's so healing there. So thank you, Daniel, for coming on and sharing about that with us. I'm really excited to just get out there and go explore some of these areas. And I appreciate that. I look forward to having more conversations about what your experiences were there. Well, thank you all. I really appreciate it. And we will see you again next week. Take care everybody. Bye. Thank you. It sounds like a great time, Daniel. Yes. Thank you.