Sedona

On a side note, there is a lot of heavy equipment at my house today.  The big oak tree in our back yard is being removed.  It is fascinating to see how they do it.  They have at least six people and 4 trucks here.  One guy is high up in the air cutting and a bunch of guys are taking care of the stuff that is cut.  I'm a bit sad to see the old oak go as it has been here since before we built this house 35 years ago.

Okay back to my trip.  We got up early and went down for breakfast at the hotel.  Everyone at breakfast was over 70, well, except for BFF and me.  Then on to Sedona.  The drive there was so interesting as I have never seen this kind of terrain.  Very red rocks, mountains and cacti.  There are lots of shops for tourists in Sedona.  BFF was looking for different kinds of turquoise and other gems.  She is very knowledgeable about rocks and gems.  We were looking for Dry River (creek?) turquoise and it seems to be rare.  I found a sucker to take back to Dylan.

 He will love it, it has a scorpion in it!  Will he be brave enough to eat it?  I know he will like showing the other kids.  There was a shop with tee shirts dyed with the red rocks.  I would have liked to get one but they all seem to have sayings on them that were too suggestive.  We stopped to have a drink at a place where you could sit out on the patio and gaze at the great view.

 I had a (virgin) pina colada.  Yum!

We got a map from a tourist place and decided to go see the cathedral.  It is the sight of a vortex so we had to check that out.   Here is the cathedral from the front.

 It is a small chapel.  I found it to be very quiet.

 You can look down from the chapel to an amazing house.  The rumor was that it was Nicholas Cage's house.  But BFF and I looked it up on google and it belongs to a  Romanian doctor who invented a procedure connected to lasik surgery.

We went looking for the airport vortex but kind of got lost.  We ended up in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road with no outlet.  So forget that.  U-turn time.  We saw a lot of nice scenery.
On to Jerome to see if they have any dry river (creek?) turquoise.  Jerome is up in the side of a mountain, a one time ghost town said to be haunted.  It was a slightly scary drive up there as there are some hairpin turns and steep terrain.  Everybody in Jerome is a character and from somewhere else.  We went to a few little stores.  We saw a very interesting quilt.

Then it was on to the quilt shop we were looking for yesterday.  It was a bit of a disappointment but I got some old hankies there.

Now to go back to Phoenix as the retreat starts tomorrow afternoon.  The hotel was so hard to find. Phoenix is a very big place.  The GPS didn't recognize the address of the hotel so we had to rely on BFF's memory and road signs.  It was dark and the traffic was awful.  Where are all these people going!?  Many lanes of fast traffic.  A couple of u-turns and we finally made it to the hotel.  Yeah!
Tomorrow we are going shopping at The Attic!
A