a two-town tour.

Thoughts about Sedona: Geologically speaking, it is eye-poppingly stunning. I cannot think of another time I've said "yow!" or similar at every bend in the highway. I laughed when we passed a sign that said "Keep Sedona Beautiful." It meant don't litter. But I asked "how could you NOT keep Sedona beautiful?" and Jeff said "Nuclear explosion?"

Still, I did not come away with any good ideas about why you would go to Sedona other than for rock-gawking. It seems less a town than a series of clustered tourist shops, artfully placed at bends in the road, such that if "Mystical Astrologer" doesn't suck you in, then surely "The Pink Java Cafe" and its friends will. I am not every tourist-dependent municipality's dream come true. When I see another sign touting "Real Southwest Crafts and Jewelry!" I don't say "wheee!" and veer into the parking lot. Instead, I say, "Dang, there's gotta be a place to buy apples around here somewhere."

Then we went to Jerome. Jerome is about 25 miles west of Sedona, up some rather impressive switchbacks, and was, historically, a copper mining town. It is, as far as I can tell, populated by 90% tourists, 2% artsy shopkeepers, 4% long-gray-haired vintners, and 4% guys who looked like they got back from Nam in '71 and began to assemble flotsam and quirky jetsam into precarious shacks on 45 degree sloped, rocky hillsides. I could not help but sense that they were all chortling wryly behind their rusty pickups, and thinking "let's be weird for the tourists, then empty their wallets."

It was a good day of driving, and having a car--which we rented from Hertz at the Flagstaff Amtrak station--helped a lot. Today, our carriage pretty much turned back into a pumpkin by 4:00pm, so I brought Jeff home to the Inn, gave him a glass of wine, squished into the almost-big-enough-for-two chair with him, and played That Thing You Do, on dvd. Then I tucked him in bed. I hope he will still manage to sleep later than my 5:00am headache-avoidance wake-up call. Tomorrow, the Grand Canyon. The walking (down the vista trails) will be two things--a delight, and a surefire way to cash in our energy chips early.