Views from the Presidential Suite: Sedona, The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert

We spent 3 days in the Sedona area. If you are not familiar with Sedona it is a beautiful, up-scale city located in the red rock country south of Flagstaff. I spent a week here 10 years ago when I traveled cross-country for a month with Bradley in our first RV.

Stephen thought it was lovely, but was not impressed with the tourist shops and the traffic. We drove through town, up Oak Creek Canyon. and walked through the shops in the center of town. I thought that we would spend more time there, but then we decided to visit Jerome and Prescott.

Jerome is basically what is now called a ghost town. Back in the early 1900's it was a mining town and once had a population of 15,000. When the copper mines closed, the town closed with it. Today, it has a population of @450 citizens who appear to be mostly aging hippies. It is the antithesis of Sedona. They run some great galleries and what we used to call head shops. The city itself is perched up on a mountain top and the homes and galleries hang from the cliff side.

Prescott is approximately 30-40 minutes from Jerome. We have been told to check it out as a future residence. It was quaint, but had an active and historic town square with one side of the square called Whiskey Row. There we found more great shops, restaurants and saloons, some dating back to the late 1800's. Since we didn't have a lot of time we will probably spend more time in Prescott next spring looking into the city and real estate in detail. It is about 11/2 hours from Phoenix; for me that may be too far from a big city.

One day while we were in the area we drove to some of the local sites. We first went to Montezuma's Castle which is a cliff dwelling of the Anasazi People, early forerunners of the Pueblo Indians who reside mostly in New Mexico. This cliff dwelling was probably @ 4000 years old. While we were not permitted to climb up to the dwelling, we got some great photos. It was named after a Mexican native because the Spaniards who discovered it thought it was built by natives of Mexico. We then went to Tonto State Park where I hiked down to a natural bridge formation, the largest travertine formation of it's kind in the world. We then drove up into the mountains east of Sedona to explore the Mogollon Rim (pronounced Muggy-on) a huge escarpment marking the southern end of the Colorado Plateau. By the way, there was a fire there @ 5-10 years ago named the "Dude Fire."

Mogollon Rim

Tonto State Park

When we left the Sedona area we drove East along Rt. 40 to Gallup, NM. Along the way we stopped at The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, 2 national parks rolled into one. I have pictures of my family when I was about 4 years old sitting on a log in the petrified forest and wanted to show the park to Stephen. The logs, which I believe are around 30,000 years old once flourished in an inland forest Eventually they fell and the area was flooded. Silica from the water leeched into the wood turning them to stone. (Sort of sounds like Lot's wife) Actually, the color of the logs is brilliant and no two logs/stones look alike. The painted desert is basically a landscape of small and large hills that are colored by the minerals in the sand/sandstone. While pretty, it doesn't compare in my mind to the sandstone cliffs and formations we have seen elsewhere. Check out the photos!