Day 17 - Flagstaff to Sedona and back

 

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Weather:  Sunny in the high 70’s/low 80’s.

Steps: Shaun - 11,604, Shannon - 9,194

We had an absolutely perfect day to visit Sedona!  The temperature was perfect and the sky was the bluest blue possible.  We drove the scenic route from Flagstaff through Oak Creek Canyon (which was supposed to take less than an hour), and our first issue was that we missed the turnout for the overlook, and we chose not to turn around because the traffic was really bad coming down the mountain.  We did stop at a vista that was super pretty, but the road was full of switchback and super slow drivers, so we never did make it back to Oak Creek.

Our first stop in town was at the Visitor’s Center where we got our maps and information about trolley tour offerings.  We decided to be bold and go with the Red Rock Magic Trolley company rather than the more popular companies, and it turned out the guy who checked us in had actually lived at Pontiac Trail and Beck at one time.  Small world, isn’t it?

While we waited for the tour to start, we scoped out the local shops and planned for our post tour attack.  The tour was only about an hour, and the tour guide had a very distracting sing-song vocal intonation that bugged the crap out of Shaun. She did provide some good information that we wouldn’t have gathered on our own, though, and we saw parts of Sedona we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

After the tour, we went to several shops and bought the stuff we’d found earlier. In keeping with Shannon’s favorite approach to eating while traveling, we ate at the Silver Saddle Cowboy Club that our tour guide had told us was the quintessential “old west” dining experience. Shannon got an appetizer sampler consisting of rattlesnake sausage, bison skewers, prickly pear cactus fries, and cilantro fry cake, which was served with 3 different sauces.  It was mostly delicious, and Shaun’s strawberry salad and onion rings turned out to be the best of the trip. We also got sasparilla to round out our dining experience set among the misters in the outdoor cafe. We really enjoyed ourselves, and we could check off the “eating like the locals” requirement all in one fell swoop.

After shopping some more and picking up a map to all the vortexes (more on that later), we stopped for homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream (for Shan) and chocolate macaroons (for Shaun) at the Black Cow. It was incredibly busy but totally worth it.

Next we walked to the other end of town to check out the Sedona Arts Center, which was a co-op for local artists that was very nice but expensive (as you can imagine). We felt like we’d done our part to support the local economy, so we headed out to the Airport Mesa where we’d been told one could experience the magnetic energy found in several places in the area. Fortunately, the views of town and the red rocks were really good.  Unfortunately, Shannon’s totally negative energy scared the vortex energy away.

We continued on the Red Rocks Scenic Route to Bell Rock which is another vortex site, but alas….no tingles were felt by the ladies. We decided not to go back up the Oak Canyon Creek road and instead drove back to Flagstaff going around the horn to avoid the traffic. We ate leftover Thai and Italian carryout for dinner while packing our boxes to shop home and played a game of Bananagrams. Shaun won (even though she was actually a rotten banana in the second round because she spelled pho as “phu”. Who knows though...phu could be a Vietnamese word that we’re just unaware of...it could happen!)