Sedona: A Photo Essay

K wrangled some free-ish accommodations from her good friend, so we set out last Thursday, inappropriately early, for the eight-hour drive to Sedona, to celebrate my 40th birthday and to be in a place where our lives would improve radically for the next few days, only to backslide to normalcy upon returning.

Lunch in Kingman was mediocre, but the Roadrunner cafe was greasy enough to satisfy. "What a cute tiny desert community," we thought, then went over the hill to see Kingman proper, which felt a lot like Barstow.

We missed the cutoff to Sedona, but Karen found something called Schnebly Road, which would shuttle us straight across. A local road, fifteen minutes max, right? Then the pavement went away, replaced with rocks and cattle guards, and pink jeeps with tourists taking pictures. Twenty minutes later trees opened up and a canyon advanced quickly and I got a crazy feeling of vertigo as the universe opened up before us.

Then we got out and took pictures.

After a few minutes of this I captained my Soobie down the increasingly rugged Schnebly Hil, which took another 40 minutes or so, averaging speeds of 5 mph or so. Damn you, Schnebly!

Sedona is an amazing place, no doubt.

There is plenty of strange foliage, and many strange people too.

There are UFOs and places for these spacecraft to land on.

The best thing is: Sedona makes you feel really small. This is a good thing, because as a human I am fairly huge. K calls me a lummox from time to time, but that is another story. Still, it is hard not to contemplate the universe when you are reduced to antlike status by your environment, especially by something or someone other than your wife.

Then there are the energy vortexes (vortices, dammit), which may or may not exist. The theory is that this energy causes the trees to spiral all crazy. I started out as a Vortex Skeptic, but then converted to belief when an argument seemed imminent. And it did give me a lot of positive energy to not bicker about vortices, so there must be something to it.

Even Sleepy-E had to contemplate the universe when the sun went down and everybody went back to their resorts. He made a promise to have more quiet in his life instead of constantly filling it with podcasts and DVD bonus features and even music. He also committed to start writing about himself in the third person when things got too personal.

This is what happens when you put your inexpensive point-and-shoot camera into one of those coin-operated set of binoculars up at the airport. It is hard to prevent the round vignette from making you think about action/adventure films, or the lackluster Shelly Long comedy, Outrageous Fortune.

After three nights of rejuvenation and hiking and lounging, K wanted to stop in Flagstaff on the way back. What could possibly be in Flagstaff ?

Only the cutest little downtown and a spectacular breakfast at a new place called El Criollo. Or is it just Criollo? I had blue corn blueberry pancakes and Amazing Bacon (my caps). Karen had something called the Haitian; I cannot remember what it was, but it was sublime.

I actually think that Flagstaff wins in many ways over Sedona: it's a college town, with a functioning downtown, and better food too, perhaps, and cheaper too. Maybe it just reminded me of college, I don't know. The landscape of Sedona is unparalleled, but Flagstaff is cute too.

After breakfast we drove home. The Soobie was punished but she performed well on the hostile backroads of northern Arizona. My car has been vindicated and now I feel like a million dollars.

Now I can go back to my humdrum existence! An article in the Boston Globe a while back argued that more short, intense vacations produce more overall happiness than fewer longer vacations. A three-week vacation doesn't provide a proportional increase of happiness over a one-week vacation. You are better off taking short and intense vacations, and more of them.

So that is what we will do.