I keep coming back to this, hoping for updates. My thoughts are:
- It's a long drive from Phoenix to Seligman, and there's no obvious direct route. Did she come in from the West or from the East? What made that her destination for the night? If she was originally planning to go BACK to Phoenix the next day, that tells me her planned route home was thru Phoenix and that she had already decided not to make the trip to Connecticut before she left Phoenix.
- She had a lot of belongings with her when she left her car (voluntarily or involuntarily). It's unlikely she would have gone off and set up camp somewhere very far from her vehicle without trying to get that dealt with first (get it towed, get it patched on-site). Why was the camera left behind if she took everything else?
- I've only seen it mentioned that on 10/4, "cell phone and credit card activity had ceased by then" but when exactly did cell phone activity cease? LE must have more information around this. Did she have cell phone service there? Verizon coverage map shows at least 4G service in most of the area around Ash Fork (though localized "dead zones" are always possible).
- Did LE clear the "woodcutter" that encountered her near Ash Fork? From what I can tell he was the last person to see her alive, and her vehicle was found not far away.
I'm leaning towards an abduction/attack or self-harm as equally viable options. Crying in a cemetery, fear of her ex-boyfriend, anxiety over doing the trip alone, history of non-specific mental illness. None of that paints a good picture.
There used to be only one route up that way, but there was *so* much traffic coming in and out of the California border that they built a parallel highway that connects Phoenix to Interstate-40. 40 is one of the most trafficked highways in the US, since it goes all the way from California to South Carolina, IIRC (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
So, since she ends up in Seligman, then Williams (I think) and then certainly near Ash Fork, but that makes it look like she did take the 17 to Flagstaff, drove on to Seligman/Williams (towards California), then BACK to Ash Fork. It doesn't make a lot of sense and I've found it worrying.
If she had stayed on the 17, she would have had more miles to drive back to California, but she also would have gone right past Sedona. It's by far the more scenic of the two routes and has more services. Oak Creek Canyon is amazing. But it doesn't seem as if she had time to visit there at that point in her trip.
I'm forgetting whether she was seen in Williams or Seligman first. But in any case, once she left those towns, she was driving east again (on the 40, towards Flagstaff, and pulls off for some reason in Ash Fork).
Forest road beauty between Ash Fork and Williams (Williams Mountain in the distance). To me, Phoenix to Williams is a half day road trip. We routinely drive from the California to Grand Canyon in one day, and sometimes further (Gallup is usually our stopping point). 500 miles or so is a pretty standard road trip goal in the Western US (or Australia - heck, Aussies routinely plan even longer trips when they visit the Western US). Our house to Gallup is 670 miles. I've done this alone, and I prefer to drive even if I have someone to spell me.
Phoenix to Flagstaff is 144 miles or so, and from Phoenix to Ash Fork is 195 miles. I keep questioning her strategy - if she was planning San Diego to Connecticut, she needed to average way more miles a day (as most people do) on that cross country journey. Something was off with her planning. And now no one knows where she is and she is without her car.
