Arizona Tourist Traps

June 24 - Jerome and Sedona, AZ

The 24th was both a travel day and a tourist day, and man did we really fit in some activities!  From Usery we drove about 120 miles to Distant Drums RV Resort in Camp Verde, AZ. I prefer to call it Desert Drums, however. We pulled out of Usery at about 7:00 AM (of course) and had a great highway/interstate drive. There are some steep parts of the interstate in AZ on I-17 north so we decided it would be best to settle in behind an 18 wheeler with our emergency flashers on and take our time to do out best to keep our temperatures low and stay off the brakes.

Here we are in the reflection of the truck taking our sweet, sweet, time.

We got to Distant Drums about 9:00 AM.  With the great help of the super friendly staff, we parked in our pull-through spot and decided to start our exploring for the day. We knew we were near both Jerome and Sedona so we thought we'd go to Jerome first. Distant Drums is the perfect location for visiting these two places and that's ultimately why we choose this park. Plus, our new Newell friends from Lazy Days (Ron and Debbie) gave it a great review.

Here we are at Distant Drums. Beautiful park!

So what else is there to do with basically a full day ahead of us? Go be tourists. And, baby, we are proud of it! This next set of pictures is in Jerome, AZ. I would describe it as a city that was built into the side of a mountain. The road to get there was just a lot of switch back turns up the side of the mountain. I said to Dad, "if we got here in the Newell, I would be crying," Dad goes, "me too!" So go Jeep! Jerome was a cute little town with many restaurants and  people yet not commercialized at all, managing to maintain the feel of a tiny town. There was a lot of FREE (YAY!) visitor parking and we ended up having to walk quite a  ways, but that was no big deal (free, duh). So we walked around here for a while and the streets were stacked into the mountain so we walked a lot of stairs. A great place to spend a few hours, and we were proud we didn't spend any dollars! Go us!

I missed all of the other Jerome City Limits signs, so this is as good as it gets. Apparently as a picture phone taker, I am pretty darn bad.

The elevation of Jerome, AZ. Mile high!

Cute little firehouse in Jerome.

Overlooking part of the city from where we parked. It was amazing how far we could see. On the right side of the pictures, you can see some houses, and there are actually houses  in the city.

Off to the left is just a drop off down into the valley and around the curve is just up, up, and more up!

Looking down into the valley from the road to Jerome.

We are standing on a higher street here, and you can see how the roads are "stacked" into the side of the mountain. You can see how steep the side of the mountain is and those roofs are roofs of homes within the city.

The Jerome Grand Hotel. Built into the side of the mountains.

After we had enough of Jerome, we got back in the Jeep and decided that we still had plenty of day left to go to Sedona. It was probably about 2:30 or so. The drive to Sedona was only about 45 minutes and it was really amazing to see the red rock start to appear closer and closer as we approached the town. I had left the informational map that we found at Distant Drums in the Newell (whoopsie) so Dad just put Starbucks in Sedona in the GPS (or talking lady as Darlene calls her).   She easily directed us to Sedona. Sedona is significantly more touristy trappy than Jerome. The main street was covered in people, shops and traffic, yet it kept flowing nicely probably due to the gazillions of traffic circles. So we could obviously see the amazing red rock but didn't really know how to get a better view closer to it. So we decided to park and walk around some more.  I planned to redeem myself for forgetting the map. 

There is no other picture that could do Sedona justice. It was just absoluetly amazingly beautiful. Dad and I both loved it, and it was so interesting how there was this red rock and these huge formations out of the normal land.

We walked around and found a new map and talked to a tour information guy about how to get close to the rock.  He suggested:
 1. A Jeep ride and did we have back problems or was I pregnant? - NO! to both.    Dad thought I would have a heart attack in a Jeep in these mountains and I totally agreed.  
2. A helicopter ride. Yeah, right.
So suggestion number 3 was to drive down this Loop Road and that's exactly what we did.   It was certainly close enough for us.   We saw both some amazing rock formations and some amazing houses too!

These pictures are all from my cell phone, and the rock is still so different than anything I had ever seen in the East. This is on the Loop Road.

More red rock. Look closely and there are houses in the middle of the picture. The architecture fit right in with style of the mountains and with the feel of the city of Sedona as well.

We took a different way out than in and this is heading away from Sedona. It was designed for heavy traffic yet always room to see the beautiful landscape as well.

More rock to see when leaving Sedona.

For dinner, we were back in Camp Verde, and didn't want to go to the Casino (even though we had a free shuttle).   Dad found a restaurant called the Horn Saloon. Well, it was just the best dinner. We each had something we couldn't pronounce but had an idea of what it was. We both truly enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant. It was beautiful inside and had several fancy wines and beers.

I had the Arribiatta salad and Dad had the Lahmacun. Our waitress made Dad pronounce his and he didn't do too terribly. It was so good, it wouldn't surprise me if we go back!!!



More tourist trapping later...