Standing on a corner...

I am without any doubt whatsoever that a sensational Sedona sunrise is the best way in the world to wake up. Unfortunately, I’m guessing – I slept until nearly eight. The Javelina had returned to the hills to pass out under Mesquite trees and sleep it off, but the human locals were already on the move, so I decided to join them.

First stop was the Heart of Sedona Coffee, a coffee shop so good I came halfway around the world to return to it. I got a latte for Nic that looked strong enough to atomise concrete, and an Americano (aka long black, to those of us in Australia) for me which somehow raised the bar to something even stronger. Next door was seemingly the world’s largest organic food shop, where I blasted past slow moving, weathered hippies to pick up some organic milk and Wallaby yoghurt - apparently made in the Australian manner, in California, so I was curious to say the least –and headed back to the Sugarloaf Lodge.

The kids were on the loose somewhere outside, running around amid the cactus. My efforts to calm them down by warning them about rattlesnakes and tarantulas seemed to have no impact so I gave up, squared away the coffee with spasming delight, packed up a seemingly ever increasing number of bags, and hit the road north, toward Flagstaff and, ultimately, Holbrook.

First stop on the way out of town was Slide Rock State Park – I’ve been here twice now, but unfortunately never in summer, as I’d push small children out of the way without regard to get to have a go sliding down the river rocks that give the park its name. Apparently it’s a bit of a rough ride – jeans and water socks are recommended to avoid lacerations and too much blood entering the local drinking water, but one day I’ll hopefully get the chance. Still, the park was beautiful, red rocks rose above pine trees, small pockets of snow still clung tenaciously to the shadowed sides of the cliffs, and the sky was an epic, Arizona blue. Our time there, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly time enough. I’m seriously wondering how much it’d cost to move to Sedona for a couple of years…

We continued up Oak Creek Canyon, past remnant scraps of snow amongst pine trees and reef rocks, through scenery so spectacularly beautiful it could make a man far braver than I weep openly with joy. We opted to bypass Flagstaff and turned into Walnut Canyon, home to the Sinagua Indians until around 1400 AD. All I can say is that they must have been a) incredibly tough, and b) incredibly good climbers – the cliff dwellings are precipitous even today, with the aid of stairways and handrails, made even more tiring because it’s some 6000 feet above sea level. On a clear day with blue skies in spring it was already hot on the sunny side of the cliffs, and icy on the shadowed sides. Even with the eroded caves being bricked up, it would have been somewhat nippy in mid-winter, to put it mildly.

At this point I’m sorry, but my rambling has to stop for a bit of a Colbert-style “tip of the hat, wag of the finger” to the normally very good people of the National Parks Service. In National Parks you’re constantly reminded that you’re not allowed to remove anything from the park, to save it for future generations. I’m in complete agreement with this philosophy, but I personally feel they took their stance a wee bit too far when my son, who’d never seen snow in his life before, attempted to carry a piece of it out of the park. The harridan behind the front desk roundly chastised him for attempting to pilfer NPS snow. So, on this occasion, it’s got to be said – what a ‘tard.

We ran for our car with the NPS staff hot on our tails, laid a huge smoking burn out in the car park, and fishtailed our way wildly out onto I-40, a lump of melting contraband in Jackson’s hand. Once we got a few miles between us and Walnut Canyon I began to relax a little, the backward glances grew less frequent, and now we were safely away, headed for the sheer spectacle of what can probably best be described as a freakin huge hole in the ground – Barringer Meteorite Crater, aka Meteor Crater National Natural Landmark. Even when the raw statistics of it are spelled out, it’s almost impossible to appreciate the sheer scale of it – a crater around 1200m across, 170m deep and made from the suspected impact of a meteorite 50m across just boggles the imagination. Both the kids loved it, especially the museum where they took great and repeated delight at constructing virtual meteorite hits capable of obliterating humanity several times over. I tried to warn them ominously that this crater was created around 50,000 years ago, and earth experiences such an event roughly once… every 50,000 years… but my dire threats were ignored as they launched yet another rocky fusillade upon our unsuspecting planet, cackling wildly. What hell hath we wrought?

Dragging my budding intergalactic overlords away from the controls we headed to the gift shop to pick up various items of uselessness, including a genuine trilobite fossil for Jackson. The really nice old guy behind the counter tried to talk Nic into buying a couple more of them, so that she might fashion them into some really nice trilobite earrings, but for some reason the thought of wearing long dead multi-segmented sea organisms on her ears didn’t float her boat. Sometimes I just don’t understand her at all.

Adding to the groaning rear suspension of the Escape once more, we returned to I-40, swung by Winslow, Arizona for a quick round of Walmart shopping and posing for a cheesy photograph on an anonymous Winslowian corner, then stamped on the gas for Holbrook.

I had dreams of staying in a wig wam at the creatively named Wig Wam Hotel, a bit of pure Route 66 Americana, but I was pipped at the post – as I stood in the reception area hoping to get a room, the woman behind the counter got off the phone with some geezer who’d just nabbed the last one. Bitterly disappointed, the kids returned to the car, and as we watched a freight train about 100 feet from the  wig wams I wished the lucky recipient of the last one a miserable night’s sleep.

With barely a couple of hours sunlight left, we headed out of Holbrook past the disturbingly named Bucket Of Blood Lane for Petrified Forest National Park and wandered amongst the largest remnant pieces of fossilized tree, then drove North, over the old Route 66 where a rather poignant memorial of a bygone era, a rusting Model T Ford, sat on a fragment of road heading east. I find it slightly sad, somehow, that so much of America’s road-trip identity is wrapped up in a piece of once-glorious road that is now completely missing in parts, redundant as a whole. I can’t help but feel somehow things would have been better if it was preserved, but then maybe like Elvis, Cobain and Hendrix, it’s the loss that makes the legend.

We drove on in silence through the spectacular landscape of Painted Desert National Park, glowing under a sunset rippling with waves of smoky cloud, found a Ramada Inn on Apache Avenue, washed away the dust with a bottle of Oak Creek Pale Ale and joined the Javelina. At least in spirit.