To Arizona and Back!

It's been a busy few days, with the conclusion of the Noir City Film Festival last weekend followed by a major work crunch, meeting my deadlines just in time to leave on a trip to Arizona!

It seems like we were just dropping our son off to start his freshman year at Northern Arizona University, yet somehow the year flew by and it was time to empty out his dorm room and move him home for the summer! He had a great year and loves NAU, where he'll be employed as a Peer Jacks mentor next year. It's an excellent program which helps make sure out-of-state freshmen feel at home at NAU and points them in the direction of any resources they may need over the course of their first year at college.

Here are a few shots snapped on my cell phone over the last couple days...

We returned to Redneck's in Kingman, Arizona, a great little BBQ place which I wrote about last August:

The late charactor actor Andy Devine -- seen most recently by me in ISLAND IN THE SKY (1953) -- continues to be very much a presence in Kingman. As I wrote last summer, a major thoroughfare in Kingman is named in his honor, and Redneck's had a nice plaque noting they'd received an award named for Devine:

The Andy Awards have been awarded to Kingman businesses since 1978. The local rodeo is also named in Devine's honor.

Inside Redneck's there was a wonderful black and white photo of a bustling Kingman street in the '30s; a similar photo can be seen here. In the photograph I particularly noted the Hotel Beale, which is still standing today. It's empty now, a shadow of its former self, but I really enjoyed seeing that the "Air Cooled" sign is still there, just as it appeared in the old photograph:

I did some Googling upon arriving home and discovered that the Hotel Beale had been owned by Andy Devine's father! Tom Devine purchased the hotel in 1906.

I loved the beautiful clouds as we approached Flagstaff, elevation approximately 7000 feet:

The NAU Skydome in the distance:

The NAU website describes the Skydome as "third largest clear-span timber dome in the world."

Time to say farewell to the freshman dorm this morning...

...and hit the road for California, with another stop for lunch in Kingman:

Welcome back to California! I always feel a bit as though I'm entering a foreign country, having to pass through a border checkpoint when re-entering the state.

One year of college down, three to go. In a couple of years we'll have two students in college simultaneously, which will be interesting!