Driving from Ehrenberg (on the Arizona-California border) to Sedona presented us with another day of pleasant surprises in scenery and vistas. The first part of the drive was a pretty flat, straight pass through what I think of as stereotypical Arizona desert. The surprises were the number of Saguaro cacti that greeted us, and the number of RV parks that were apparently designed to attract “snow birds” from the north. The cacti were majestic in there grandeur. The RV parks were interesting in that they were really out in the middle of no place (what the RVers call “Boondocking”), and the only attraction that I could see was that it didn’t snow.
After driving trough this area for awhile, and getting accustomed to the fact that that is what we were going to see, we were struck by a change. Every time we seemed to go up a mountain ridge, the scenery changed dramatically. First were the deserts filled with little other than cacti. Then there were some plateaus with joshua trees and what appeared to be scrub juniper. Next thing we new we were in ponderosa pine forest. Soon we went to grassy areas, and then back into ponderosa growths with red rock outcroppings. I tried to get some pictures of these areas, but they didn’t turn out particularly well because so much of the visual impact is in a combination of the vastness of the areas and in the very subtle colorings. Neither of these comes through in the photographs. The only way to really understand these views are to experience it first hand.
In addition to these vistas, we also drove through the towns of Prescott and Jerome. Prescott was the original capital of Arizona, and is a very picturesque old west town. It looks like much of the old, hardy western attitude is maintained. Jerome was once a mining town, and is built into the very steep side of a mountain. Part of what appears to be the original town is accessible as a ghost town, and the rest seems to have been gentrified and converted to an artsy, tourist town. Each of these towns would be good to come back to and spend a day or so investigating and exploring.
This evening we got into Sedona. The drive took a lot longer that I had expected, but it was
worth it, both because the scenery along the way was so pretty, and because Sedona is so
pretty. After getting a site in an RV park, we walked around town for awhile.
I did pretty much discover that the problems with my camera had been the batteries that I
was using. After experimenting with using the camera attached to an AC power source,
everything seemed to be better. I bought some new and different batteries this morning,
and all seems to be much better off.
We didn’t
really shop much because most of the stores were closed, but we did do some window-
shopping. We also had dinner at a pretty fancy restaurant. We weren’t really hungry
enough to eat a full meal, so we just had appetizers. The special appetizer was alligator
legs. We stuck to a much more conventional buffalo chili. (A choice made easy by the fact
that the waiter told us they were out of rattlesnake.) It was really good, and one of a couple
of women that were eating near us tried the alligator legs. She said they were good, and
when we asked her if the tasted just like chicken, she said that they were more like pork,
both in taste and texture.
On Tuesday morning, we got up early and went out to the mesa on which the airport is
located. We were up there not long after sunrise, and the scenery was, once again,
breathtaking. We also looked a place where one of the “vortexes” was supposed to exist.
(Note that, for a change, Linda didn't have to wear her black hat to keep warm.)
We didn’t find any, and we didn’t feel any more or less spiritual than other times. I’m not
sure what was supposed to have happened. After that, I hung around town, shopping,
playing with my computer, and finding a post office to mail some post cards. Linda was
assigned the task of serious shopping.
