June 22, 2009 - From Santa Fe to Sedona

We left Santa Fe, wishing we could have stayed another day, but knowing we had to keep on track. There have been several towns we felt like that. Sedona has now become one of them.

But back to our drive West.....On our way we saw a coyote with an early lunch of some kind dangling in its mouth right near highway 40, a rest stop with the toilet paper pad locked to the dispenser (New Mexico), a petrified forest, the painted desert, a meteor crater, and saw the mileage on the van go to 7000 while we were at 7000 feet altitude! We watched the surroundings change dramatically as we headed west. It is fascinating to watch the scenery change from desert to alpine to red rock mountains. The Painted Desert looked like what you might imagine the planet Mars would resemble. As we approached Flagstaff, there were Alpine Forests and this evolved into the Red Rock mountainous areas as we drove in on Rt 89A into Sedona. Hair pin turns in which Pat said he did not need the accelerator for well over a half hour. We watched in amazement as bikers in a charity bike race were headed UP this road! And they did not look that fazed by the terrain!

The hotel where we are staying has cabins as an option. This provided humor as Fiona's image of a cabin was a dirt floor with no indoor plumbing. Maybe something like Little House on The Prairie. She was concerned about this until we explained that these cabins would have all the normal amenities of a hotel room. And chocolate too! We were too tired to go off campus for dinner and had basically skipped lunch so that we could do a Griswold like all day tour of Arizona (Petrified Forest/Painted Desert and the Meteor Crater) on our way to Sedona. So we opted to dine at the restaurant here at the hotel. We were able to dine right beside Oak Creek. We decided to do breakfast there again this morning because it was so pleasant.

Today we went out on a Pink Jeep Tour. I had never heard of this, but apparently The Pink Jeep company has been in business since 1960 and they offer off road tours of the surrounding mountains and canyons. There are various levels of adventure you can sign up for. We kept hearing about the Broken Arrow tour being the most popular. After I quizzed the concierge I felt like Patrick and I were in no need of risking a slipped disc or similar injury with the future weeks of travel ahead. I opted for a slightly tamer ride that still was adventurous enough for all of us. We were jostled about for 2 hours on off roads with really rocky terrain. Our driver explained the training for this job takes 4 months and the final task to become a tour guide is driving the trails BACKWARDS!!! YEs, I said backwards! I asked how long that took and he said about 4 hours per trail!

The scenery was beautiful and our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the surrounding areas and the Native American history specific to this part of Arizona. Any questions we asked he was able to answer. And Patrick pretty much quizzed him the entire time. Occasionally, Fiona would come up with an important question such as "how do you drive over the cactus?". We actually caught site of a Roadrunner and it had the exact profile of the Bugs Bunny cartoon character! Except it was much smaller! But it was really fast. So Patrick says to mention that we have seen a coyote, a roadrunner and we were at The Acme Oyster House.....that is the cartoon trifecta!

We had Buffalo Burgers and cactus fries (the Prickly Pear Cactus fruit was the dipping sauce and fries were made out of the oval disc- like Prickly Pear cactus) at the Cowboy Club which were both terrific.

Tomorrow we are off to the Grand Canyon. We will miss Sedona but have new adventures to find. The kids continue to hold up well, even on the hard travel days like yesterday. We must have been in and out of the car 10 hours yesterday before arriving here at our destination. I had loaded the car up with Power bars and many other snacks for days like that. Certain routes, like the one we took yesterday, do not have many appealing options for meals anyway. They are mostly truck stops and Indian Reservation/Casino type places. Not the kind of places you typically want to take your family for a meal or rest room stop. But they really didn't complain. I guess getting to see the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert and the Meteor Crater made up for being trapped in the car so long. And I bought the requisite box of petrified wood samples for us to show everyone when we return.