This last weekend I spent 24 hours in Flagstaff. Before living in NYC, I never really experienced "fall," nor realized how beautiful it is. I had mentioned to Dave about a month ago that I wanted to make a trip to Lockett Meadow to see the aspens, and this last weekend (October 7-8) we made it happen. Actually, I should say Dave made it happen. I was thinking we should just do a day trip, but then we saw on the Flagstaff fall website that beginning October 7th Lockett Meadow would be limited to 100 cars per day. So we started talking of doing an overnight trip, but we didn't get around to booking a hotel and by the time I looked online last week Thursday and Friday there was nothing great or reasonably priced. I was thinking we would either be foregoing fall leaf peeping or getting up super early one morning so we could be in Flag by 8am. Well I was talking to Dave Friday and I said we needed to figure out what we were doing for the weekend and he said "Going to Flagstaff!" I didn't know it but he had already booked a place so I got my fall weekend after all :)
We left Phoenix at 11am on Saturday and made it to Flagstaff by 2pm. For some reason the I-17 was backed up from Anthem to Black Canyon City so that added an extra hour to the drive up.
We stopped for a coffee at Firecreek Coffee Company,
and then walked around downtown Flagstaff for a while.
After a little bit of a detour walk (due to our first choice restaurant being closed for a special event), we ended up at Tinderbox for dinner.
Sunday morning we were up early to head to Lockett Meadow. Given the 100 car max, we didn't know what time they would start turning people away, but we didn't want to miss it. We did breakfast at Carmels - this is the same Carmels that used to be in Arcadia. We had a nice conversation with the owner and after Carmels in Phoenix closed he was planning to open another concept, Charlie Fine, in Phoenix but decided the Phoenix restaurant market was over-saturated so he and his wife decided to move to Flagstaff and re-open Carmels. If you are ever in Flagstaff this is a must-stop restaurant.
We made it to Lockett Meadow by about 8am and we were told we were car #80 in for the day. The drive from the highway to the trailhead is quite intense - I was thankful that Dave was driving and that we were in the Land Rover.
The rest of these pictures show the beauty of God's creation and leaves changing. If you are in the Phoenix area, this is definitely worth a trip to the high country.
After we finished hiking (it was more like a walk) we stopped at Diablo Burger for lunch before our drive back to Phoenix.
Such a great weekend and excited for the cooler temps in AZ!
