Sedona and Beyond

Kelly, Jean and Melissa at Oak Creek Canyon

October 14 – After a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we managed to get on the road just   after 9.  We headed down 89A towards Sedona but first we stopped at Oak Creek Canyon where the Indians have their crafts set up.  We browsed on our way down to the look out point.  After taking the required number of photos we took our time perusing the various jewelry tables.  Karen, Melissa and I each made purchases but the only thing Jean was interested in the lady would not negotiate a price so she passed on it.

 



Chapel of the Holy Cross

The road was quite curvy but we made it into Sedona without issue.  Once parked, Karen and Jean went one direction and Melissa and I another.  We allowed an hour to look and shop.  We ended up in the same shop so walked back to the car together.  Karen and Jean bought some things but we didn’t.  We didn’t really look much just walked and talked and got my photo with a statue in town. After waiting in line to park at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, we finally got a spot and walked up to view it.  The chapel itself is small inside but the view from there is awesome.  It looks pretty massive from outside due to the way it is constructed like it’s growing out of the rocks.  The red rocks are all around and it would be a great place to sit and spend an afternoon.

 

Bell Rock

Further down the road were Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte standing side by side.  Once we got on the other side of them I stopped so Karen and Jean could get some photos.  We just email them back and forth to each other if anyone missed a shot.  We stopped for lunch in the Village of Oak Creek.  We had good Mexican food that kept us going the rest of the day.  We headed south into Camp Verde and took the cutoff to Jerome.  Everyone was impressed with the mountainside location of the town.  We

Mining car converted to toilet

went to the Jerome State Park where the home of Mr. Douglas is that was donated to become a museum about the mining there.  We all went in the museum and learned more about mining and the different kinds of stones.  Jerome sprang up from the copper mining in the area and grew to 15,000 people at one time and then dropped to 100 but has gradually grown to 500 now.  It’s currently mostly artists, restaurants and boutiques.   We drove around in town and Karen wanted to get certain photos so we stopped for that.

 

We took the Scenic Byway from Jerome to Prescott.  It was very curvy reaching an elevation of over 7,000.  It was a nice ride but did put us behind schedule.  We had planned to go into downtown Prescott to Whiskey Row but we wanted Melissa to go to a Trader Joe’s since she’s never been.  There was one and we made it and ended up buying chocolate cheese, salami, ham, grapes and 2 kinds of chips to have for dinner with the bottle of wine we had from Albuquerque.  It was 6:30 by then so we headed back to Camp Verde and got checked into the Territorial Inn.  It’s a no frills place but clean and nicely decorated in a western theme.  Melissa was impressed by the horsehead door knob to the

Horse head door knob

adjoining room.  We set out our feast but could not get the cork out of the wine bottle.  It was a plastic one I threw in and we would take turns holding the bottle and someone pulling on the hand.  The opener broke off.  The set came with 2 so we tried the second one and had no luck.  I got out my pocket knife and tried cutting off the part that we did manage to get out and tried the corkscrew again.  No luck.  So I started cutting away the cork and the knife shut on my pointer finger on my left hand and cut it pretty bad.  It bled a lot but I had one duct tape band aid to put on it and finally got it to stop bleeding.  The cut is about ¾ inch and pretty deep.  Oops!  Then we managed to punch the cork into the bottle and went on with our wine and dinner feast.  Yum!

 

Early night for us tonight.  We meet up with Carole tomorrow and take Melissa to the airport.  We will be sad to see her go.  We’ve had such a great time together.