Our train pulled out at 18:15 as we settled into our sleeper and watched Los Angeles drift by. What we could see of the sunset was hazy with a mean yellow light.
We jumped up for the 20:00 dinner reservations call and hurried to the dining car. Being among the last to eat, several menu items were no longer available and we both ate steak.
A tap at our door. “We’ll be in Flagstaff in about thirty minutes.” We arrived a few minutes early for our 04:36 scheduled arrival and stepped out into the cool and very dark night air. Our bags delivered, we took a seat in the station with three other couples and two singles. The first to leave were our neighbors on the train, whisked off by an Arizona Shuttle van.
The station agent was very accommodating and held our luggage as we left the station at 06:15 and walked to breakfast and coffee at the Downtown Diner. The Diner, with country playing a little too loudly for our ears and with a smattering of old men drinking coffee, was true to its name. The coffee was weak and the little sealed cuplets of half and half wiped out any of its taste. Our food was unsophisticated but substantial and good and we ate.
I called the hotel and they had a room for us. We returned to the station to retrieve our bags and began the trek down Beaver, right at Butler, and left on Milton. Every town and city has a Milton, a main drag connecting to freeway, double (or more) lanes, never empty of cars. Milton is lined with fast food eateries, a few local restaurants and shops, and car services. The lights are separated by several blocks and create a temporary lull in the stream of rushing traffic. After a night sleeping on a swaying train, our balance and energy were down and our bags soon became heavy with a nervous weariness. Our home is sixty-two feet above sea level. Now we gasped for air at 7,200 feet. And then we were in our room, dropping the bags and flopping on the king-sized bed to finish our night’s sleep. At the station, someone had suggested we call a cab. We righteously replied, “We need the exercise.”
Our room was seven or eight blocks from downtown Flagstaff. A little more than a block south of us was a Mountain Line bus stop, a surviving Barnes and Noble was a little more than a block up the street. Further north, a Natural Foods store with a huge holstein cow mural faced Milton. Across from us, the campus of Northern Arizona University spread almost to the downtown. All this and more we learned by wandering around after our rejuvenating nap. We were well-placed.
The next day, we rode the bus to the start of the Woodland Trail volkswalk and walked the out-and-back route to Fort Tuthill Park, site of the annual County Fair, open-air concerts, and various horse events. Built on a former logging rail bed in Ponderosa Pine forest, the Woodland Trail is one of a complex of well-used urban trails in and around Flagstaff. We met bicycle riders, ravens, runners, squirrels, Flickers, vultures, Jays, a number of speedy fat rodents resembling prairie dogs, and, near the return end, a delightful couple older than us who told us about a winter in the 1970s when Flagstaff had eight feet of snow.
We ate supper at the Flagstaff Brewery, across from the train station. A busy, active pub with excellent food and wonderful ales, it has a large outdoor seating area where we found a table for two. The handlebars of a bicycle chained to the fence protruded through and provided a fine place to hang my hat.
The next morning, Friday, and our son Scott’s 45th birthday, we boarded the 07:45 Arizona Shuttle bound for Williams and the Grand Canyon.