Thursday, April 17, 2008

December 8, 2007







On Tuesday, Nov 27th, we left Tempe, AZ. We
needed to go to Camping World in Mesa, AZ as
our first stop on the way out of town, The RV
really needed an oil change! Our appointment was
at 10am, and we finally got on the road again at
about 3:30.....almost dark!

Dont get me started about Camping World - they
are usually very useful stops, say for
biodegradable toilet paper - but if you want
service done on your vehicle?? questionable at
best. I would like to say that I am not trying to
dis them, they are still one of the few places
you can go - but they called me the night before
to make sure I knew that I had a 10 am appt, and
then they left us sitting in the parking lot til
almost 2:30...

We drove to Sedona, AZ, arriving after sunset,
so we couldnt see how pretty it was until the
next day! We drove all over Main Street looking
for a place to park, and couldnt find one. So we
had to drive around and around the block...and we
finally had to park in a parking lot that said
"NO RV'S" It was relatively quiet so we figured
it was ok - it was a lot for a convenience store
and drug store that was closed!

After we had dinner in town (Allie loved the
leftovers from a piece of steak!)we drove about
a mile to our campground, Rancho Sedona, which is
where one of the pictures is from - it is of
the bark on a tree next to the RV - it was so
pretty! Green and brown and shiny!

On Wednesday we got the scooter off the back of
the RV and Ken and I went for a ride around Red
Rock Country. We liked it there so much that
we decided to stay for several days, until
Saturday, December 1st.

You will see in the pictures and postcard why
they call it Red Rock Country! The rocks are
rusty! The red color in the rocks is hematite,
which is iron oxide, and it gets rusty with the
passage of time, water and air. Some of
the names of the giant rock formations are Snoopy
Rock, Slide Rock, Coffee Pot Rock and
Cathedral Rock. There was a picnic area called
Banjo Bill's with a giant rock that looked like
a banjo!

We looked all over the place for a javelina,
....they are animals that look sort of
like pigs. Well, I guess they are a kind of
wild pig, with really big teeth. They live in the
desert and eat prickly pear cactus! The other
common wildlife in the area are coyotes, spiny
lizards, tarantulas and tree frogs! We didnt see
anything but people shopping for the holidays!

There were also some national monuments there:
1) Montezuma's Castle - is the site of cliff
dwellings that archeologists say were the home of
the Sinagua people from the years 600 to
1400 AD.
2) Montezuma's Well - is a limestone sinkhole,
and a very green spot in the desert, an "oasis"
3) Tuzigoot - is a partially restored Indian
Pueblo with a museum.

It started to rain on Friday morning, Nov 30, a
nice, steady rain, it seemed to us. Of course
we were still riding the scooter around, and got
soaking wet. Not Allie! She was nice and dry
and warm inside the RV. But did she cook dinner?
NO! By Friday afternoon there were warnings on
the radio of flash floods and mud slides! The dry
creek bed behind our campsite started filling up,
and by Saturday morning it
was so full of water that it was roaring! Good
time to leave, dont you think?

We were going to take Rt 89A out of town and go
through Flagstaff, but were told there was a
mudslide up ahead, so we had to go a different
way! Through Jerome, AZ. Wow! What a drive that
was. Jerome is a town that is about 5500 feet
up a mountain. The road is one of those twisty,
turny, narrow, two laners that I think should
say no rv's..... Ken was driving and I was such a
bad passenger that I had to go sit in the back of
the rv where he couldnt hear me going "oh f%@k"
the whole time! There was no way we could visit
Jerome, because the houses and other buildings
were built right into the cliffs, and there was
just NO place for an RV to park. We climbed up to
7000 feet, before heading down the other side
into Prescott! I tried to take a picture from the
window, but it didnt come out very well, but
you can get the idea! Then theres a picture
looking back at the mountains we drove through
from the window.

More soon!

Love, Mindy, Ken and Allie

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