Pix Of The Day: Welcome Relief On A Hard Trail
CREDIT: © Ian Scott-Parker/CAMwrangler.com
WHERE: Pipe Spring, AZ. WHAT: contrasting accommodations.
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Thundering across the vast, arid expanse of the Arizona Strip, that area of the state adjacent to Utah and isolated by the Grand Canyon, even a modern traveller pampered by smooth roads, climate control, and cruise control, may get some small sense of the relief offered by Winsor Castle at Pipe Spring. The fort gave safety, shade, shelter, rest and sustenance to settlers journeying in pursuit of the American aspiration of 'Manifest Destiny'.

The day we visited there was a recreation of campfire cooking in a Dutch Oven: we are familiar with stewed meat in big black cast iron pots, but peach cobbler over a piñon wood open fire was a new experience. The contrast between our society today, and the accommodations offered by the fort in the latter half of the nineteenth century, must be as great as the contrast between the fort and the simple shelters erected by the indigenous Kaibab Paiute people.

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