Sedona, AZ

19 Sep 2010--Left Page, AZ yesterday for a few days in Flagstaff, AZ. We are staying at Camp Navajo Army Depot until Wednesday, when we will go into the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. As far as we can tell, this is an ammunition storage facility...other than the guy at the gate, we have seen no signs of life.



No signs of life, that is, except these guys at the gate this morning as we were leaving the base. The Famcamp host had told Cathy yesterday that there was bow hunting of elk on base. I was surprised to hear there were elk in Arizona at all, never mind actual hunting on base. The host said that the elk were in the rut, that he had seen as many as 100 of them behind the Famcamp in the valley below us, and that as a minimum we should hear them "bugling" their mating calls.

So these guys were very proud to show us the female elk they had just killed this morning. She weighed about 500 pounds and they had killed her with a bow and arrow from about 45 yards. The guy in the black shirt did the actual killing. If you blow up the picture and look at the elk's chest, yo can see they have already gutted her.

We headed out today to take a ride to Sedona, a city about 40 miles south of Flagstaff that both our friends Carol and John, and Marie's friend Linda, had mentioned that was worth seeing. We took the scenic route through the Coconino National Forest and Oak Creek Canyon Rec Area. If you blow up the pic in the middle, you can see people swimming in the water down in the canyon.

Sedona is a beautiful tourist town, somewhat "artsy" like Santa Fe, NM, but I would say bigger and a little less artsy. At points it looks like some of the shops are built right into the mountains...really pretty!

One of the biggest attractions around here is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, a Catholic chapel built into the rocks high up over the southern part pf the city. A woman had it built in 1956 in honor of her parents. You can see how high up it is when you see me on the ground in the middle pic.

I posted both of these stitch pics because I couldn't decide which one I liked best. haha

At least as interesting as the chapel was this house directly across the street from it. A couple groups, one of which was a "Koi Pond" group and the other a "lawn" group, were taking a tour of the grounds, so Cathy and I went in under the guise of belonging to the Koi Group! haha This place was almost sinfully rich...just look at the grounds of the house, and the view of the mountains and chapel as you look out from it.

It has a 4 car garage, and right in front of this car was a Rolls Royce! Someone told us that the owner of the house was a doctor...and had something to do with the founding of laser surgery, or laser technology.

And then they almost ruined my day when I saw this car had this bumper sticker on it. Now it could be that the owner of this house didn't own this car parked on his/her property, but it just seemed a little unseemly that someone this rich would be looking to get rid of health care for those who didn't have it. Wasn't there something in the bible about the rich, the eye of a needle, and heaven? haha

You have to walk up a curvy road to get to the church at the top of the hill.

Notice that you can see the mountains through the windows of the chapel. Totally gorgeous!

From up at the chapel, here you can see the house, the grounds, even the Koi Pond on the left. I must admit that I wouldn't mind living there! haha

Looking up at the mountains behind the chapel you can see what looks like the head of an eagle. We think this is natural, not carved, because there were no signs pointing to it telling a story.