We flew from Atlanta to Phoenix on Thursday, November 3rd, hopped in our rental car at the airport, and headed north on I-17. Our ultimate destination was the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and a 70th birthday party with some of Tom's classmates from Boca Ciega High School's class of 1964, but we had built into our itinerary a side trip to Sedona on the way up to the Canyon.
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At a rest stop on I-17 heading to Sedona from Phoenix. Red Hills (known to the locals as Red Rocks) in the distance.
We arrived in Sedona late afternoon, checked into our motel (Orchards Inn) in Uptown Sedona, and took a nice walk down one side of the street and up the other (Uptown Sedona is not very big). Lots of shops and restaurants, all geared to the tourist trade. We found a nice little restaurant for dinner, then headed back to the motel to unpack and hit the hay. We were still on Eastern Standard Time.
Here are some shots of Uptown Sedona, as well as one from our motel room balcony.
Looking south from Sedona. Bearing right at the roundabout takes you to West Sedona and on to Cottonwood and Jerome. We would head that way on Friday on a tour of wineries and wine-tasting locations.
Friday morning we breakfasted at the Orchards Inn buffet, then took a more-leisurely turn around town than we had the previous afternoon. At 11 a.m. we were picked up at our motel by Teri from Sedona Wine Adventures. We had scheduled a tour of four wineries/tasting rooms in the area, and Teri was our very knowledgeable guide. We got to taste a lot of wines during the 6-hour excursion, most of them good red or white blends, but nothing we wanted to buy a case of and ship it back to Atlanta. We did buy one bottle to take with us to the South Rim so we'd have something to sip in our room in the evening. It was a red blend named Mule's Mistake from the Page Springs Cellars Winery, which was the first stop on our wine tour. Strange name for a wine (or maybe not these days), but very enjoyable.
The state of Arizona has quite a few wineries, and most of the grapes are either imported from California or grown down in the southeast corner of the state where the elevation, soil, temperature, etc., are right for a number of types of grapes.
Here are some pictures from the wine tour. Part of the fun -- above and beyond tasting wine, which is always fun -- was seeing some of the countryside outside the city of Sedona. It was a day well-spent.
Patty "tasting" at our second stop, a winery in Cottonwood. She looks happy.
This is the view from the tasting room in our third wine-tasting stop in Jerome, an old mining town built on the side of a hill, now a haunt for artists and, in the case of our host Teri (who lives in Jerome), an escape from California corporatedom. This view is looking northeast, and you can see the red rocks around Sedona in the distance.
Our last tasting-room stop was at the Chateau Tumbleweed winery in Clarkdale. This is a shot of our host Teri and my wine-tasting partner, who, like me, was probably reaching her limit on the imbibition of vino.
There were three items on Saturday's agenda. First, we wanted to explore Sedona a little more, buying whatever baubles and trinkets struck our fancy: Tom got a ballcap, Patty a nice shirt. Our third agenda item was to find a really nice place for dinner. We thought we might have to head to West Sedona, but it turned out the Cowboy Club in Uptown Sedona had a really nice room off the bar & grill area, and we had an enjoyable dinner there. Our second agenda item for mid-day was a Pink Jeep tour. There are a lot of jeep-type tours into the surrounding hills; the Pink Jeep tours are probably the best known. There were a lot of different tour options, some rather rugged. We chose a tour of some ancient Indian dwellings at the base of one of the hills west of West Sedona, about a 3-hour trip total. We didn't go up-and-over any of the hills, but the ride was still pretty rocky. Here are some shots from our excursion.
Sunday morning we had a leisurely breakfast at the Inn, then packed up our gear and headed north on State Road 89A for the Grand Canyon. We really enjoyed our stay in Sedona.
