Flagstaff

Our camp on FR535 is just outside of Flagstaff. We have made several trips in to check out the town as a potential home site and to drink tea and pick up supplies. The population is about 60,000 - not too big and not too small; in fact, it feels like it is just the right size.. It’s nestled in the pine forest about 45 miles south of the Grand Canyon. The weather has been awesome - between 90 during the day and 50 at night.

The downtown is so quiet - even though there are cars, there’s an absence of white noise - you can hear your own footsteps while you walk around. There is an active train yard right in the middle of town - it just looks cool. There is a really cool herb shop specializing in native American herbs. I would love to have a shop similar to this one . They make their own bath and body products, tinctures and specialized smoking blends. They have a wall of loose bulk herbs - most priced at $2 an ounce, which is quite a profit margin. There is a cool used book store owned by a really, really nice wacky dude who we ranted with about Walmart coming to town. There is also a Bookman’s which blows the doors off Half Price. There are lots of other little shops, galleries, coffee houses and music venues all on the ground level with apartments above them. There is even a fresh squeezed juice shop in the mall that has wheatgrass shots. Hiking, biking, skiing, snow boarding, camping, horseback riding - it’s all here! Oh! I almost forgot, we went up to the Lowell observatory (http://www.lowell.edu/AboutLowell/history.html). It’s way up on this hill, and on clear nights, the public can come up and look through the Clark refracting telescope! Unfortunately, it was too cloudy for us to do any viewing. There is not one ounce of pretension here. Everyone is very nice and totally laid back. I could really see myself living here. I could open a little herb shop downtown and have a couple of treatment rooms in the back - sorta like a small version of White Crane. I could even get a little downtown apartment and walk to work! I could learn to snowboard and camp as much as I wanted to. I could even have a horse if I wanted to! Well, the search isn’t over yet, but Flagstaff is looking pretty good right now!!!

I'm doing laundry near NAU and picked up this wifi signal. There is a really cool coffee shop next door called Macy's. They bill themselves as a European style coffee house - whatever that means, but they make a mean couscous! I'm drinking the most bitter cup of green tea I have ever had - in fact, it is almost undrinkable except for the fact that I know it will help me weather the heat better. As soon as I'm done, it's off to hot hot hot Las Vegas. We check into a condo this afternoon. We will be there for a whole week!