Aug 27 — Sep 1, 2026 · Arizona
No Foo 2026
FRANK · KELSEY · MATT · JESSICA
The trip that happened because the concert didn’t.
This crew had fallen into the habit of seeing the Foo Fighters together. For 2026 the plan was the best one yet — front-row seats in Nashville — until the travel math stopped working. So the tickets were sold, and in the empty space where a concert used to be, a five-day Arizona loop grew instead: a haunted copper town, red rock country, and the rim of the biggest absence on the continent. The name honors the hole the whole thing came out of.
What follows is the official record — ghosts, ravens, monsoons, bears, a blood moon, and two birthdays toasted on the edge of the world.
The 5:20am flight out of Medford put Frank and Kelsey in 109° Phoenix by breakfast, and by evening the whole crew was assembled on Matt and Jessica’s couch — twins, dog, and all.
Then the sky opened the trip properly: a total lunar eclipse, watched from the backyard as Earth’s shadow slid across the Moon and turned it ember-red. Taawa darkening Muuyaw, as the codex would put it. Five days of strange and wonderful things followed, and honestly, the Moon warned everybody up front.
Out of Chandler by nine, up through the Verde Valley, and into a copper boomtown stapled to the side of Cleopatra Hill — 15,000 souls once, a few hundred now, plus whatever else stayed on.
Charcuterie and flights at Caduceus Cellars — Maynard’s tasting room; no Maynard, still awesome — then lunch at the Haunted Hamburger, where the hammers famously kept vanishing during renovation and the cocktails arrive in branded mason jars. Main Street’s saloons and oddball shops, the Mine Museum, a 4pm check-in at the Jerome Grand Hotel — the old United Verde Hospital, 1926, the town’s most haunted address. And Jerome wasn’t done: live music at the Spirit Room down the hill, and after dark, a ghost tour — spirit boxes crackling, questions asked, answers received. More on that below.
All events reported by F. Brannen, witness of record, Jerome Grand Hotel, night of Aug 28–29. The management is aware. The management has always been aware.
Payment for the 5:30 wake-up: the sun climbed out of the Mogollon Rim trailing a pillar of light, monsoon cells still flashing in the distance, and a lone hot-air balloon hanging in the haze over the valley. This is the same sky the Hisatsinom carved into rock a thousand years ago, a few canyons north. It still works.
One last Jerome errand on the way out: the Skullatorium, the town’s skull museum and oddities parlor, because after a night of phantom plumbing you say goodbye properly.
Inside: Dayak tribal skulls, saber-toothed things, mystery bones with curator’s notes, and two grown men grinning like the twins. Then down the switchbacks and into Sedona’s red rock country — Airport Mesa, cathedral views, monsoon clouds building on schedule for the evening show. Night at Sky Ranch Lodge, up on the mesa where the sunset comes to you.
Morning at Red Rock State Park, where the Insta360 turned the crew into residents of small round worlds and one enormous old cottonwood held court over Oak Creek.
Then north, up out of the red rocks and into the pines, arriving at the South Rim as the monsoon dragged curtains of rain across a canyon that takes six million years to explain itself. This leg was the celebration: Matt’s birthday had just passed and Jessica’s came a couple of weeks before, so every raised glass on this trip counted toward one of them, and the big one was dinner at El Tovar, the 1905 lodge sitting right on the edge, with storm-light for sunset. A mile below and out of sight, rangers were still airlifting hikers out of Bright Angel Canyon after the flash flood two days before — a reminder, all weekend, that the canyon writes its own itinerary.
Years ago, in a fever of recovery-tinged sleep, a raven led Frank through the woods to the edge of a clearing — and he woke before stepping in. He drew the bird that morning and recorded the poem that came with it; later it was inked over his heart, wrapped in an endless knot. In Dawson City this summer, a pair of ravens shadowed him for days, and one hopped ahead, looking back, coaxing — the dream replayed in daylight, interrupted again at the last corner.
So when a raven the size of a housecat took up a post on the South Rim railing and stared directly into the soul of this traveling party, nobody was surprised. The correspondence continues. Position: open.
A last morning walking the rim — fog pouring through the canyon, squirrels running a coordinated heist on an unattended backpack — and then the monsoon stopped performing at a distance and came for the crew directly. The hike back to the visitor center was conducted fully saturated. Verdict, unanimous: totally worth it.
Dried out, it was south through Williams for Bearizona, where the wildlife came to the car: white wolves, bison, grizzlies, a black bear holding a meeting with a committee of ravens — because of course even the bears here answer to ravens — and what looked exactly like a bear cub napping in a ponderosa, which on closer inspection was a raccoon. A bandit, in a tree, on Frank’s trip. Naturally. Evening landed the crew back in Chandler with Matt, Jessica, and the twins, via Portillo’s.
The final morning: get the twins fed and out the door, then a farewell brunch at Hash Kitchen, where the sign on the wall says Bloodies Are For Breakfast and the build-your-own bloody mary bar produced structures that should require permits. The cotton-candy mimosa flight also made an appearance, because restraint was never on this itinerary.
A pool, a long hang, a ride to Sky Harbor from Matt, and AA 6373 home to Medford at 4:50. Somewhere over the desert, four people agreed the sold concert tickets had turned into something better.
In a single month, Frank and Kelsey stood on Denali and at the rim of the Grand Canyon — the continent’s highest point, and its grandest absence. The trip itself was named for an absence. Turns out that’s where the good stuff lives.