a'a-wesome: even more cool rocks!

Flagstaff was about 16° Fahrenheit (that's about -9° Celcius, if you were wondering) on Monday morning.

We bundled up in as many layers as possible (only having brought so many warm clothes to Arizona) and embarked on a search for breakfast.We had stopped in Flagstaff for coffee on our way to Sedona on Sunday and every coffee place we could find was closed. Monday though-- no problem. We found a little place called White Dove Coffee Shop, which had great coffee and tea and breakfast burritos. I'm not fully human until I eat in the morning, so after that, the adventures could begin.

We decided to take advantage of free National Parks admission to celebrate MLK Day and went up to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument to explore a little bit. This fit in perfectly with the rest of the weekend's theme of COOL ROCKS: volcanic rocks! A'a! The greatest scrabble word of all time, right there in front of me. We only hiked one trail because it was really cold out, and there was a lot of ice and little guarantee that the trails would be ok, but it was really beautiful. I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of lava fields-- rocks that were laid down by hot, violent volcanic explosions-- and the fresh, clean, sparkling, peaceful snow covering the park.

Disappointing: you can't hike up the side of the volcano anymore, too many people doing that caused too much erosion. Still, you can look up 1000 feet at it and just imagine what it must have been like about 900 years ago, all melty and exploding. Kind of cool.

Good weekend. Tree rocks, sedimentary rocks, red rocks, volcanic rocks. You could say the weekend rocked. ha ha.