Red Rock Country - Visit One

This is going to sound very new-agey, but since living in Phoenix I feel disconnected to nature and to the earth. My relationship with the envirnoment is usually through a car window, and my experience of being outside is usually not a good one - the highs are still above 110 on a regular basis and the traffic is terrible. I can see that if one grew up in a suburban environment like this one, and didn't visit other places, one would be pretty apathetic about causes like recycling, reducing pollution and saving endangered species. Its hard to see the value in nature if you've never gotten anything from it.

But enough soap boxing. To renew my environmentalist soul I went up to Sedona for the day on Saturday. Sedona is about 2 hours north of Phoenix, in the heart of red rock country. It is so incredibly beautiful up there; having that experience a few hours away totally makes up for living in a concrete city.

I started my day by hiking the Brins Mesa Trail, which is a 6 mi round trip hike up the east side of a mesa, and then down through the wooded area on the west side. Below is mitten rock, which I high-fived on my hike. (I was alone on my adventure, which was probably a good thing because I was doing weired Ithaca stunts like hugging big outcroppings of rock and talking to trees). (I still don't have a camera, so these are stolen pictures.)



The colors are even more amazing in real life - red and white striated rock, green trees, purple prickly pears.

After my hike I visted the chapel of the holy cross, which is built into the side of a mesa and is open to the public. The chapel is small - two rows of maybe 10 pews each, but looks out over the Sedona valley (Sam, you would love it! Next time you visit...)



Sedona was quite touristy (or at least the part I was in), so I spent just enough time there to look into a few art galleries. And I stopped in the Three Dog Bakery, a bakery that only sells products for dogs, including flavored dog treats in bulk (1/2 lb minimum).

Instead I sat at the Blue Moon Cafe in Oak Creek, a tiny town between Sedona and Rt. 17 (the major north-south rt, between Flagstaff and Phoenix. It was there that I ran into my first real, live tumbleweeds crossing the road. The Blue Moon was great because they let me sit on their patio for almost two hours, nursing my $2.75 iced tea, using their wireless internet and reading my arizona travel books. Their bathroom was wall papered with kitchy redneck signs, one of which read "Yer family tree is a bush", which I found inordinately funny.

I have a long weekend next weekend (labor day), and I fully expect to go back for a longer hike, and to hunt down bookstores in the area. I hear there is one called the Well Red Coyote.