From Amtrak to Dino Tracks, a Jaunt in Coconino County!

More 2023 Adventures

Flagstaff, AZ → Page, AZ
174.0 mi (280.0 km)

Flag me down, everyone!

After a month of recovering from my action-packed adventure across New England, I’m back at it! A window has opened that I’ve been watching for close to five years, and I’m determined to clamber through it. That’s what brought me down to Union Station to catch the Southwest Chief to Flagstaff. I may be getting old for overnight buses, but as far as overnight trips go, the train’s about as fine as can be!

And I’ve really missed traveling by train! I haven’t been on one since last year, and I’ve been cautious about them since the COVID-19 Pandemic, but boy, compared to plane travel, it’s a real treat to walk right to the track without long security lines, practically unlimited bag space, and a seat that reclines so very, very well. Plus, at this time of year, I lucked out and had a whole row to myself!

For reasons unknown, we arrived an hour late, which was just fine by me. Hopping off at 5:15 AM instead of 4:14 AM meant one hour less spent wandering in the dark and cold before the nearest breakfast place opened. After a big helping of pancakes and some piping hot coffee from Mike & Ronda’s The Place, this beaver was well buzzed and ready to greet the sunrise in sunny downtown Flagstaff!

I’ve been to Flagstaff before, but that didn’t mean I’d seen everything there was to see! Far from it! In the hour or so before Pulliam Airport’s rental center opened, I had plenty of exploring to do! For instance, just east of the Amtrak station was the Old Two Spot Logging Train, which came here in 1917 to work for the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company. It got its nickname because its original number, 25, got worn away by the water bags it carried on its side. That left behind the number 2 and a spot! It was a working train all the way until 1993 and became a city monument six years later! Today, Old Two Spot is resting comfortably on the National Register of Historic Places!

It was a pretty chilly morning, so it made sense that my next stop on the historic tour would be a cold one: the Ice House! Unlike many historic buildings, this one’s name was as literal as can be. It was a house for making and storing ice, five hundred tons of it at a time! This was just one of many enterprises by Flagstaff’s five famous Babbitt Brothers and the town’s first commercial building constructed after World War II!

Speaking of the Babbitt brothers, they were kind of a big deal for Flagstaff! Originally from Cincinnati, they came here in 1886 to try their hands at ranching, setting up the enormous C.O. Bar cattle ranch, which is still in operation today. Also still in operation is David Babbitt’s 1888 mercantile, though it’s gone through a lot of phases over the years, even serving as the Coconino County Courthouse for a while! With the help of the railroad, these five brothers set this city up for a big boom during and after World War II!

Nearby, the historic Weatherford Hotel was still booking guests, as it has since January 1, 1900. When John Weatherford first got here, he’d made a fortune selling mining equipment and was ready to settle down with his new wife, Margaret. Once they’d made Flagstaff their home, Mr. Weatherford not only established this hotel but also the city’s first Elks lodge, an opera house, and the school that would become Northern Arizona University!

But I wasn’t here to recline in luxury! Far from it! I had business to attend to up north in Page, but first, I wanted to see Flagstaff’s flagstaff, something I’d completely skipped back in 2016! Like the Ice House, Flagstaff’s name is very literal. Before it was even a city, this was a lumberjack camp, and those lumberjacks, to celebrate July 4, 1876, nailed an American flag to a ponderosa pine pole and set it up in the middle of camp, calling it Flagstaff! The one that’s here today is a replica, but it’s still standing on the original site!

Whew! With the day warming up to a very comfortable temperature, I freshened up with a quick dip in the nearby Frances Short Pond to make sure I wasn’t going to be too tired on my journey north, then called a ride to the airport and headed north to my main destination!

Of course, some cool places have this tendency to stop me in my tracks, and in this case, those were literally tracks! Dinosaur tracks! The super cool Moenkopi dinosaur tracks (Moenkopi being Hopi for “place of running water”) were actually located on the Diné / Navajo reservation, not far off AZ-89, so obviously I had to check them out!

Right off the bat, a guide walked up to me and offered to show me around. He didn’t speak much English, but that was kind of cool. It’s nice to know that Diné is still thriving enough to be a first language compared to some Native languages, which are more endangered! In any case, he started off by showing me some tracks in what was once an old mud flat. It’s a desert now, but back in the Jurassic, this was so muddy that you could see where some of the dinosaurs had slipped and slid!

It’s really hard to know for sure which dinosaurs were walking here, but the three-toed patterns all point to therapods! These could have been the famous Coelophysis or Dilophosaurus, or the less popular Eubrontes or Grallator. Either way, this was a major gathering spot for them around 200 million years ago, and their tracks have been fantastically preserved!

Some of the rocks that the guide pointed out were a little suspect. Some of the “bones” looked awfully like sandstone, and some of the “dinosaur poop” looked more like concretions. I wasn’t 100% sure that these were dinosaur eggs, but if they were, this could have been a nesting site of some kind! It’s all part of a mystery that predates all of us, but one that I find super duper cool!

My guide hadn’t mentioned payment upfront, or how much his guiding fees were, but he looked at me expectantly for twenty bucks after the super quick tour. Just like when I crossed the Ticonderoga Ferry in 2022, I was flat short on cash, but also just like then, there was an ATM about 10 minutes east in Tuba City. So I hustled down that way to get the cash for the guide, who didn’t expect me to come back, but as I’ve always said, when you promise to pay, you better live up to that promise! It was just a little more hassle than I expected. In any case, it was still well worth the stop, and though I coasted into Wahweap well after dark, at this time of year, dark happens super early. I checked into the Lake Powell Resort and prepared myself for an early morning. I was finally, after years of watching water levels on the National Park Service’s website, going to visit Rainbow Bridge National Monument!

Rainbow connection coming up!