You lunch under a natural bridge formed by the huge shaft of a prone giant, and step off more fallen pillars to find lengths greater than 130 feet, and seat yourself on stump ends of a rare enough beauty for an emperor's throne; but always you come back to the first pleasures of a child—picking up the smaller pebbles, each pebble as if there had been a sun shower of rainbow drops and each drop had crystallized into colored diamonds.
I said don't go to the Petrified Forests expecting a big thrill. Yet if you have eyes that really see, and go there after a rain when every single bit of rock is ashine with the colors of broken rainbows; or go there at high noon, when every color strikes back in spangles of light—there is something the matter with you if you don't have a big thrill with a capital "B."
There is another pleasure on your trip to the Petrified Forests, which you will get if you know how, but completely miss if you don't. All these drivers to the Forests are old-timers of the days when Arizona was a No-Man's-Land. For instance, Al Stevenson, the custodian at Adamana, was one of the men along with Commodore Owen of San Diego and Bert Potter of the Forestry Department, Washington, who rescued Sheriff Woods of Holbrook from a lynching party in the old sheep and cattle war days. Stevenson can tell that story as few men know it; and dozens of others he can tell of the old, wild, pioneer days when a man had to be all man and fearless to his trigger tips, or cash in, and cash in quick. At Holbrook you can get the story of the Show-Low Ranch and all the $50,000 worth of stock won in a cut of cards; or of how they hanged Stott and Scott and Wilson—mere boys, two of them in Tonto Basin, for horses which they didn't steal. All through this Painted Desert you are just on the other side of a veil from the Land of True Romance; but you'll not lift that veil, believe me, with a patronizing Eastern question. You'll find your way in, if you know how; and if you don't know how, no man can teach you. And at Adamana, don't forget to see the pictograph rocks. Then you'll appreciate why the scientists wonder whether the antiquity of the Orient is old as the antiquity of our own America.
Flagstaff, frankly, does not live up to its own opportunities. It is the gateway to many Aztec ruins—much more easily accessible to the public than the Frijoles cave dwellings of New Mexico. Only nine miles out by easy trail are cliff dwellings in Walnut Cañon. These differ from the Frijoles in not being caves. The ancient people have simply taken advantage of natural arches high in the face of unscalable precipices and have bricked up the faces of these with adobe. As far as I know, not so much as the turn of a spade has ever been attempted in excavation. The débris of centuries lies on the floors of the houses; and the adobe brick in front is gradually crumbling and rolling down the precipice into Walnut Cañon. Nor is there any doubt but that slight excavation would yield discoveries. You find bits of pottery and shard in the débris piles; and the day we went out, five minutes' scratching over of one cliff floor unearthed bits of wampum shell that from the perforations had evidently been used as a necklace. The Forestry Service has a man stationed here to guard the old ruins; but the Government might easily go a step further and give him authority to attempt some slight restoration. You drive across a cinder plain from Flagstaff and suddenly drop down to a footpath that takes you to the brink of circling gray stone cañons many hundreds of feet deep. Along the top ledges of these amid such rocks as mountain sheep might frequent are the cliff houses—hundreds and hundreds of them, which no one has yet explored. At the bottom of the lonely, silent, dark cañon was evidently once a stream; but no stream has flowed here in the memory of the white race; and the cliff houses give evidence of even greater age than the caves.
Only forty-seven miles south of Flagstaff are Montezuma's Castle and Well. Drivers can be hired in Flagstaff to take you out at from $4 to $6 a day; and there are ranch houses near the Castle and the Well, where you can stay at very trifling cost, indeed.
It comes as a surprise to see here at Flagstaff, wedged between the Painted Desert and the arid plains of the South, the snow-capped peaks of the Francisco Mountains ranging from 12,000 to 13,000 feet high, an easy climb to the novice. Only twenty miles out at Oak Creek is one of the best trout brooks of the Southwest; and twenty-five miles out is a ranch house in a cool cañon where health and holiday seekers can stay all the year in the Verde Valley. It is from East Verde that you go to the Natural Bridge. The central span of this bridge is 100 feet from the creek bottom, and the creek itself deposits lime so rapidly that if you drop a stone or a hat down, it at once encrusts and petrifies. Also at Flagstaff is the famous Lowell Observatory. In fact, if Flagstaff lived up to its opportunities, if there were guides, cheap tally-hos and camp outfitters on the spot, it could as easily have 10,000 tourists a month as it now has between 100 and 200.
When you reach the Grand Cañon, you have come to the uttermost wonder of the Southwestern Wonder World. There is nothing else like it in America. There is nothing else remotely resembling it in the known world; and no one has yet been heard of who has come to the Grand Cañon and gone away disappointed. If the Grand Cañon were in Egypt or the Alps, it is safe to wager it would be visited by every one of the 300,000 Americans who yearly throng Continental resorts. As it is, only 30,000 people a year visit it; and a large proportion of them are foreigners.
You can do the Cañon cheaply, or you can do it extravagantly. You can go to it by driving across the Painted Desert, 200 miles; or motoring in from Flagstaff—a half-day trip; or by train from Williams, return ticket something more than $5. Or you can take your own pack horses, and ride in yourself; or you can employ one of the well known local trail makers and guides, like John Bass, and go off up the Cañon on a camping trip of weeks or months.
Once you reach the rim of the Cañon, you can camp under your own tent roof and cater your own meals. Or you may go to the big hotel and pay $4 to $15 a day. Or you may get tent quarters at the Bright Angel Camp—$1 a day, and whatever you pay for your meals. Or you may join one of John Bass' Camps which will cost from $4 up, according to the number of horses and the size of your party.