Copper Art Museum

Over the last weekend we had a great time getting away from the fire smoke and cooling off. It has been really hot and rough in Northern Arizona due to the Raphael and Backbone fires. Thankfully they are contained now and a lot of the danger for people and their homes is behind us.

When things get that smokey we looked for somewhere to go that was interesting and indoors. We ended up checking out the Copper Art Museum in Clarkdale, Arizona. It was a great way to check out an interesting place while not breathing in all the smoke. The museum has a rather large mix of copper artifacts and facts about copper. It was an interesting and beautiful visit.

The most interesting part for me were the art pieces that were made out of shells from bullets in World War I and II. I had never thought of people using something that was meant for destruction and turning it into something more beautiful like this, and it was amazing to see stacks on stacks of these art pieces in the museum.

Bearizona

The next day we took a trip up to Williams and went to one of my favorite places, Bearizona. I am not sure if I love it because of the bears or the clever way they combine Arizona and Bears but what ever it is I am truly delighted every single time we are there.

This park is a rather unique one as you can drive through the enclosures of several animals and really get up close to them. There are predators like wolves and bears and more docile creatures like donkeys and mountain goats.

We love to take an afternoon every now and then and drive through the park, watching bears swim, eat, sleep and all the other things bears do. While we were there this last time we saw some grizzle bear cubs having a ball in their pool. They were wrestling, swatting and playing with each other for a long time and put on quite the show for us. They are there as rescue bears that were brought in from Montana after they were discovered as orphans.

The park has so many other animals that you can watch play and move about. My favorite other than the bears are the otters. You can watch them on land or in the water. My absolute favorite was when they kick off the glass in front of me to swim even faster. They are so cute and fiesta it is hard not to swoon.

One time while we were at Bearizona there were really cute bear cubs playing around and being super charismatic. Of course everyone fell in love with them. Next to their enclosure there was a cave like room that looked like it led to another view of the baby bears. We walked in and were super surprise to only see lizards in smaller enclosures. We were disappointed of course but moved on. Later in the day we walked by that exhibit and heard a man walk out and yelled, “I thought it was a room with more baby bears!” Same, man. Same.

Red Mountain Hike

We usually go for a hike close by at Red Mountain but this time could not because the forest was closed. I honestly don’t know if I ever knew that the forest could close, but due to the extreme fire danger it is closed right now.

Here are a few pics from a hike we took at Red Mountain in 2019 to help illustrate what a great hike it is. It is really gentle hike of about 2 miles round trip. There is really diverse scenery that helps make the hike go by quickly and gives lots to look at along the way!