300 mostly uninteresting miles gets me from Santa Fe to Flagstaff, AZ with my biggest goal being to beat the rain that was forecast for the afternoon. What took me a while to figure out is that rain here is not like rain in Seattle. Here, we're talking extremely localized thunderstorms, and hitting one or missing them all is a roll of the dice.
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| Slide Rock State Park - Just North of Sedona |
The road from Flagstaff to Sedona drops 2,000 feet and winds down through hairpin turns through beautiful forests and red rock formation. Easily one of the most scenic rides I've been on, and with little enough traffic that I didn't feel hurried.
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Sun on the Mountains
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The mix of clouds and sun make the light on the land particularly spectacular. Click on any of the pictures here for the full size version, but none of the pictures (shot with my phone) come close to doing it justice. Have to go see for yourself!
The town of Sedona is very geared towards tourism, with lots of shopping, Jeep excursions, and restaurants. Very pleasant to walk around, but not "local". I did go in pursuit of local art and found that most things were imported - including the mystical energy crystals to clear your chakras that came from "overseas".
Nestled in the hills just south of town are beautiful adobe homes for the lucky and wealthy few. The scenery continues for a short while as the road drops further down in elevation, but soon all of the red rocks are in the review mirror and endless scrub takes over for the rest of the way into Prescott.
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| Hotel St. Michael |
Prescott is a much bigger city and the road into the historic district goes past endless strip malls and other very uninteresting parts of the city. I've made a habit of trying to book hotels right in the heart of the places I stay - mainly so I can stay off the bike and walk to places. Hotel St. Michael was a great find, and I really enjoyed both the hotel, the bistro on the corner, and one of the art/jewelry galleries located in the same building where I finally found something worth bringing home.
I left Prescott early (7am) to try to get a jump on the heat of the next 300 miles across the desert through Blythe, CA and into Palm Springs. It sorta worked, but was about 92 degrees as I dropped into the smoggy basin that runs from Coachella and Indio in the south up to Palm Desert and Palm Springs in the north. All of it is void of the natural wonders that I left behind, but is more like a man-made desert oasis where life in the pool behind gated communities draws in the older folks who no longer need access to their old jobs and lives in the big city.
Of course, I have a couple of friends who have bought places down here, and having a warm and sunny escape from the dreary Seattle winters is pretty appealing. And things are relatively cheap down here...
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| El Paseo in Palm Desert |
I was going to head out to the coast for my trip north, but with the forecast for the next few days being cooler than normal and looking at the traffic that I'd have to contend with, I changed my plans to head north to the east o LA and up the eastern side of the Sierras past Yosemite and Lake Tahoe to Reno. There are some thundershowers forecast for that area, so we'll see how it goes. It's worth it to stay off the interstate and have a bit more road to myself.
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