We drove north from Phoenix to Sedona, the town of red rocks. On the way we stopped at Montezuma's Castle, a National Memorial. Sinagua Indians (estimated to be about 5,000) lived in this valley for 300 years, until 1400. No one is quite sure why they left, but they left behind a variety of homes - some in the rock cliffs and some at the base of the cliffs. Matthew got another Junior Ranger.
We continued our drive north and soon we were in red rock country.
The scenery is just breath-taking. Everywhere you turn there are buttes, cliffs and canyons. This is sedimentary rock and the lower layers have iron in the limestone which has rusted. In some cases you can see three layers; the top, very dark layer is basalt rock from volcanic activity.
So, Sedona is a wonderful mix of hearty westerners, Eastern spiritualists, and artsy types. The town tries to please all three interests. There have been over 30 movies (mostly western, cowboy type movies) filmed here, For people who want to have a thrill and re-live the old west, there are horse rides and jeep rides. For the spiritual types, some claim that there are special :"vortex" powers in the rocks and there are even maps that show the trails to the vortex sites. (By the way, there are both female and male vortexes, according to the experts.) And there are many, many shops and galleries selling artwork, jewelry, and stone. We sampled a little of all three.
But before we go there, the following picture tells a big story about what Sedona is like. McDonnald's wanted to put in a restaurant but the town refused to let them use their traditional golden arches. The town would not back down and you can see the result. They say this is the only McDonnald's in the world with green arches!
We had been told that viewing the sunset from a high messa where there airport is located was a very popular activity, so we tried it out. Somehow we were not sufficiently impressed. The rock is already red to begin with and did not appear any redder as the sun went down. Things just got darker! And it was cold and windy!
Perhaps our best experience was hiking to Devil's Bridge, a rock formation way off the main road and pretty high up a cliff. The drive was about 2 miles on a very rough dirt and stone road (high clearance required) and then a one mile trail up about 350 feet to the bridge.
On the way out we encountered a number of those rough-riding jeeps. We would pull over and let them bounce on by.
We also explored a park in the area of Cathedral Rock, one of the most-photographed group of rocks in the west. This was also an area with a vortex, although we were told it was female so we didn't really investigate too deeply. There were interesting rock erosion patterns (we believe it was in the vortex area), similar to the glacial groves on Kelleys Island.
We spent a lot of time trying to get just the right image. Even Matthew worked with his camera and tripod to get an impressive picture.
We also drove north of Sedona, up Oak Creek Canyon to a state park and to see the rocks there. There were small amounts of snow on the ground!
We were really fortunate with our RV park. It is located right next to Oak Creek, the stream/river that over millions of years created these beautiful scenes. There is also a group of Blue Herons nesting about 40 feet over some of the RV sites. It's great to see the birds, but we're glad we're not parked directly under them!
We leave tomorrow for parts east - Meteor Crater!
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