I am approaching the end of another very busy day, our first full day here in Arizona. We are staying at the Embassy Suites, which has a nice complementary breakfast, so we started the day with that. The boys had bacon and Froot Loops (though not mixed together).

After that we went to the grocery store and visited the bookstore across the street; and then we went to mass. Flagstaff has three small Catholic churches, but they’ve evidently been combined into a single large parish named San Francisco de Asis; all Sunday masses are at the particular church called St. Pius X, and so we wended our way hither. At first glance, St. Pius X wasn’t much to look at, and I suspect the mass would have given hives to some of the liturgical purists around and about the Catholic blogosphere. Be that as it may, the sanctuary, though plain and boxlike, was clearly furnished with great love, and if the mass was of the “happy-clappy” variety it was also jammed. Both the sanctuary and the parish hall were completely full of people, and we were lucky to find a seat. Folks at the parish are involved in Knights of Columbus, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, various Bible studies, and a variety of other activities. Oh, and the sermon (given by a deacon) was right on, dealing with the day’s readings in a clear, no-nonsense way.

This is a vibrant, living parish. And tomorrow at 6:30 PM they are breaking ground for the construction of a new (presumably larger) sanctuary. Woohoo!

After church we returned to the hotel and made a picnic lunch from the stuff we’d bought first thing in the morning, and headed northeast for Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater. Jane and I had visited both on our honeymoon quite a many years ago now; and the boys had seen them before on a previous vacation when David was three-and-a-half and James was in a stroller.

The weather was adequate today; it rained on us a bit, but nothing to worry about. To a certain extent, that was due to visit to Wupatki; according to Weather.com, Wupatki hasn’t gotten any rain lately despite lots of rain to the east, west, and south. One imagines that this is why the Indian ruins there have survived so long.

We didn’t play Munchkin tonight; instead, we had a long swim and an overly long dinner.

Tomorrow I think we’ll head down Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona, there not to take the art galleries too seriously, and possibly to ride in one of the famous Pink Jeeps. We’ll see.