Day 5 – 9/24/2019 – Sedona

Before we start, there’s a photo I forgot to include yesterday. From the Gift Shop at the Tuba City Trading Post:

Now on to today. We start with a picture of our vans. This is because we have a reputation of going everywhere on massive tour busses, taking up too many parking spaces and disgorging hundreds of passengers.

After breakfast we adjourned to the conference room where a retired geology professor from NAU lectured for 2 hours on the geology of Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and the Colorado Plateau. He also gave us a pretty good overview and history of the theory of continental drift. When he started teaching nobody believed it was a thing. Now it’s commonly accepted. One other note of interest. The geological formation of the bottom of Zion National Park is the same as the top of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Interesting.

Following lunch we boarded our vans and headed out on a “tour of Sedona”. We stared west of town where we walked a nature trail identifying various plants and capturing vistas.

What appears to be a bluff from below is actually the southern extent of the Colorado Plateau.

The next stop was the Capel of the Holy Cross, a small church mounted on a rock overlooking the valley.

The vans weren’t allowed to drive us up so we had a bit of a climb to get there.

In addition to visiting the chapel – just a small chapel with a really creepy crucifix hanging in the front – we also took in the views of the surrounding area.

The two larger spires are called “the Nuns” the smaller one is “Madonna and Child”

This little cottage belongs to the guy who developed the Lasic procedure.

We hiked back down the hill and met our vans. The next stop was the “new Sedona” – the tourist trap east of the original town. We had some time to shop, eat a bit of ice cream, and sit on a deck overlooking still more formations.

Then it was back to the hotel for a brief rest before we gathered to walk down the block to a Thai restaurant. Dinner was family style as waiters plied us with Pad Thai, Musselman Curry, Shimp with vegetables, and Carrot Cake for dessert. We didn’t eat the Carrot Cake because the walk back to the hotel took us past VinoSedonA – an excellent establishment serving various libations. We sat on the patio with some of our new friends and I had an excellent brown ale while Cheryl had a Cape Cod Cranberry Vortex.

We were entertained by an old guy who sang Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams tunes reasonably well. it was a fun time anyway.

You will note that I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about vortexes. I understand that tomorrow I’ll get the opportunity to wax more eloquently on the topic.

Something to look forward to.