Phoenix/Goodyear
On Tuesday, March 25, we drove to Phoenix to visit our dear relatives who live in Goodyear. We met up at a Mexican restaurant and had a great time. Next day we checked out the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix. It is entirely devoted to Native American culture, art and jewelry. Originally composed of one room when it was built by the Heard family in 1929, it is now nine times larger.
Some of the exhibits included baskets woven in the 17th and 18th century, silver and turquoise jewelry and hundreds of Kachina dolls. My favorite exhibit was an interactive 3D exhibit showcasing nature and the night sky. The most disturbing exhibit centured around a horrible but little known practice sponsored by our government where young native american children were taken from the reservations without permission and sent to boarding schools where they were made to divest themselves of all aspects of their culture, including clothing, hairdos and language. It was an alternative to complete physical annihilation that by removing the Indian from the child, they could eliminate the Indian. Fortunately it didnt completely work and some tribal children more fully embraced their culture.
That evening, our cousins cooked us a home cooked Italian feast featuring meatballs, eggplant parmesan, sausage, peppers and potatoes and fruit tarts for dessert. Did I mention that all of that luscious food was preceded by a charcuterie board Ina Garten would be proud of. Leftovers were taken for the road.
HOLBROOK/WINSLOW
We left Phoenix on March 27 for the Holbrook/Winslow area to see several sites. First up was the Walnut Canyon National Monument. Indigenous peoples used to live in these caves and canyons. They left their homes at some point for reasons unclear; perhaps drought or over-farming contributed to their demise, but its hard to imagine living in such a rugged and harsh environment. We walked part way down one of the steep trails but could not finish the 736 stairs to the bottom. It was much cooler here than in Phoenix and we even saw patches of snow on the ground.
WINSLOW
We gave over completely to sentiment and boomerism by visiting Winslow, AZ, where sometime in the 50's Jackson Browne recounted to Glen Frey of the Eagles about “standing on a corner in Winslow” and the song Take It Easy was born.
