Sedona, Arizona!

Wednesday, 9/5

Beautiful Sedona hillside

Other than the spectacular drive through Oak Creek Canyon and into Sedona yesterday afternoon (in the rain), we hadn't done any exploring of the mountains around town.  So---we departed a little after 8am for Bell Rock, which is kinda cute, actually---if that can be said about an enormous bell-shaped rock/mini-mountain---and hiked most of the way around it and halfway up it as well.  Bell Rock is supposed to have one of the strongest Vortexes (Sedonans do not pluralize the word "Vortex" as "Vortices", all you grammar police out there) in town and I was curious to experience that for myself.  There certainly were a lot of twisted Juniper trees to be seen, which--according to local lore--twist in response to the vortex energy ...remember my obsession with all those twisty trees in Bryce?  The whole vortex theory occurred to me there already, although there is no talk, generally, about vortex energy in Bryce, whereas there are at least 6 vortex areas on the map of  Sedona.  Along with vortex tours, Crystal and bead shops, Psychics and Tarot readers and healers of all kinds.....I could have spent another day or two exploring all this cool juju.

Bell Rock...from a distance, it really does look like a round, fat bell

We had just enough time on the way back to the RV park to drive up Chapel Road to the spectacular Chapel of the Holy Cross, a small and exquisite Catholic Chapel built right into the mountain side.  It looks sort of Frank Lloyd Wright-ish.  And the views from up on that hill are spectacular.

Isn't this amazing?! (picture from the web)

Nils's great photo out of the bottom of the very tall chapel window

This enormous villa was just down the road from the chapel (it had its own little observatory!!!)...and note the cool rock  formations in the distance.

But we had a mission: to be in Phoenix by around 3pm.   We checked out at 11am on the dot and began our drive to lower elevations and MUCH higher temps.  Also, into the land of the Saguaro Cactus.  They were EVERYwhere, and quite surprising, along with at least two other cactus varieties that we hadn't seen up til now.

One of the many Saguaros, snapped from the truck at about 60mph.  There were hundreds of them!

I think of them as the Arizona version of deciduous trees---we are truly in The Southwest now.  It was 105 degs at 1pm.  We agreed unanimously that opening the car door and venturing out into the Hotter-than-Hades temperatures should result in heat stroke within 8 minutes.     Really, it felt JUST like a sauna as we ventured intrepidly across the Walmart parking lot to do some grocery shopping.  We don't know how people function in this extreme heat, but we saw them, walking home from school and collecting shopping carts in the parking lot, and doing roadwork along the highway.  Let's recap, shall we?   It was 105 degrees outside!!   A novel experience for these two travelers from Olde Deerfield in Massachusetts.

Here we sit, moderately comfortable with the aid of blessed air-conditioning.  In about 21 hours we hope to depart for higher elevations and lower temperatures with our newly installed solar equipment.  Yay!