The Road to Sedona

Oh, the road. After a few quiet days of driving, relatively speaking, we’ve hit the road again. We’ve hit it hard.

The road out of Vegas, leading southeast to the Phoenix area is … well, probably not the most interesting piece of road that we’ve driven. It’s the sort of driving where you can go 15 or 20 minutes at a time without turning. Not a lot of skill involved for the most part, though Dad did react like a pro when some dimwit was in our lane, passing a semi on a double yellow, and nearly ran us off the road. That aside, the only real excitement of the 6-ish hour drive was watching the steadily climbing thermometer, placing bets (Viva Las Vegas!). It maxxed out at 107F, about 42C for my metric friends. The other perk of the drive was watching the arrival of cactus on the side of the road. We don’t get a lot of cactus in Canada, or Wisconsin for that matter. Mom blasted off her first few dozen cactus shots, with more to come.

We overnighted in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, I suppose. Tired from the drive and our all night drinking and gambling binge in Vegas (or something like that), we had a quiet night. Ate some Thai food, caught up on some news, watched some anti-everything commercials for would-be politicians, and recharged our batteries, literally and figuratively.

The drive from the Phoenix area to Sedona could be a simple 2 or so hour ordeal, heading straight up I17. Child’s play. Not on this Floodcation. So we pulled out the envelope of advice, and went for the Apache Trail – Arizona Highway 88 to be specific. We had heard that it was a scenic drive, on a nice mountain road, but knew nothing more. It would take us on a roundabout loop that would eventually lead to Sedona, about 5 hours later. More our style.

The drive started out with a nice, narrow, winding road. Cactus galore (a few dozen more shots for Mom). The odd chipmunk or lizard scurrying across the road. Vultures circling overhead – always a pleasing sign. Must be death ahead. Perhaps not death, but after 24 miles, the crumbling pavement turned to something like a dirt road, only that the dirt was replaced with rocks and massive potholes. The two lanes became one, give or take. Guardrails were generally either not present or made of cardboard (yes). Good times.

No real way to do justice to this drive with words. 45 miles took us more than 4 hours to complete. I wasn’t even driving, and I felt like a champ just for riding in the car. Road trip glory? Perhaps. Top 5 highlight? Undoubtedly. Next time I do this, I’ll do it in a well insured, rented SUV. I will do it again. You should too.

Once we finally got out of the dust and back onto the pavement, things settled down nicely, and we put on some quick miles. Climbed quite a bit, watching the cactus change to evergreen, and temperatures drop from the high 90s to the low 80s. Before long, we caught sight of the first red rocks of Sedona. A happy ending. I visited Sedona a few years ago, and loved it. My visit was too short then, and this one will be too. We arrived minutes before sunset, and will be up before sunrise tomorrow to see the area by hot air balloon. It’ll be great, but too short. Once we finish, we’ll be hitting the road north, back to the Grand Canyon for a glimpse from the edge of the South Rim, and then onto Monument Valley. I’m giddy.

But tonight, I made the most out of the time we had, shooting photos and video of the glowing red rocks until dark. This is the only photo you’ll get for now (unless you know about @Floodcation that is). At some point, I’ll put together a highly entertaining short film of our road trip, assuming that it’s possible to make an entire film out of B-Roll footage. Stay tuned for that one.

Time for bed – 4:30 wake up call comes early, no matter which timezone you’re in.