April 30, 2007
April 30, 2007
We are going to start traveling full-time again in a few weeks. Before we give up our Tucson apartment, I wanted to drive north and see the Grand Canyon and other nearby sites in northern Arizona. A couple months ago I called the parks system to get a reservation at Phantom Ranch at the canyon bottom. The clerk said that those accommodations sell out a year in advance. Bummer!
The weather at the Canyon is finally starting to warm up so Aimee and I get set to go north. On a whim I called the park again and was luckily able to pick up a last-minute cancellation. Yes! Now all I have to do is convince Aimee to hike down to the bottom with me. She doesn’t like heights at all.
We set out early today driving north past Phoenix towards Flagstaff. Just south of Flagstaff, we take a slight detour thru Sedona. Five years ago almost to the day, on our Arizona visit, we spent a few days in Sedona and fell in love with the scenery. Shortly off the highway we hit the town of Oak Creek and get our first glimpse of Sedona’s red rocks. It is stunning and better than we remembered. As we drive into town, it looks like Sedona has grown incredibly popular. The main road thru town is jammed with traffic and houses have popped up everywhere. This is one place both of us think should have been set aside as a national park.
We are going to start traveling full-time again in a few weeks. Before we give up our Tucson apartment, I wanted to drive north and see the Grand Canyon and other nearby sites in northern Arizona. A couple months ago I called the parks system to get a reservation at Phantom Ranch at the canyon bottom. The clerk said that those accommodations sell out a year in advance. Bummer!
The weather at the Canyon is finally starting to warm up so Aimee and I get set to go north. On a whim I called the park again and was luckily able to pick up a last-minute cancellation. Yes! Now all I have to do is convince Aimee to hike down to the bottom with me. She doesn’t like heights at all.
We set out early today driving north past Phoenix towards Flagstaff. Just south of Flagstaff, we take a slight detour thru Sedona. Five years ago almost to the day, on our Arizona visit, we spent a few days in Sedona and fell in love with the scenery. Shortly off the highway we hit the town of Oak Creek and get our first glimpse of Sedona’s red rocks. It is stunning and better than we remembered. As we drive into town, it looks like Sedona has grown incredibly popular. The main road thru town is jammed with traffic and houses have popped up everywhere. This is one place both of us think should have been set aside as a national park.
We only plan to visit for a few hours so we head first to Red Rock Crossing State Park to take in the vista of Cathedral Rock from across Oak Creek. This is the most photographed spot in Sedona and was the site of many old western movies. While hiking around both of us are feeling the heat and sweating. The humidity must be higher here than in Tucson. Maybe the urban myth of “dry heat” might have some truth after all.
We also take in the views up Boynton Canyon and atop the airport plateau. We end the day by driving up beautiful Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff. The scenery changes dramatically as we near Flagstaff. The terrain turns into pine forest and is noticeably cooler. Like South Dakota’s Badlands, the red Sedona rocks must be the erosion boundary between the high Colorado plateau and the desert below.
posted by Mike and Aimee at 10:21 AM
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