Brigadoon

Sedona is a bit like Brigadoon. We found it by accident in 2000 when Jim did a time-share search for “anywhere in the southwest”, it rarely shows up on the weather channel, and there are no road signs for it until you reach the actual highway exit. Yet there are 4.5 million visitors a year to a town of about 20,000. Its three major claims to fame are: amazing red rock scenery, old cowboy movies, and vortexes; the latter attracts about 60% of its visitors because Sedona is considered to be a place of powerful energy. I can attest to the energy as I've had anxiety attacks in a couple of locations (I don’t suffer from anxiety attacks); our GPS developed a new voice and lost all its ‘recently found’ addresses within an hour of our arrival last Friday, and even with 5 active bars on the wireless connection I don’t have internet access unless I leave our apartment. The answer we give to these events, having been here many times, is “what do you expect, it’s Sedona”.

Coombs, Sedona style

it's hard to see, but this is an arch/bridge, open behind

We’ve had lovely but cool days since the snow on the weekend and have enjoyed some gorgeous hikes. Jim went up Doe Mountain, some of us had more sense, and came down with a blister so we’ve been going on easy trails since then. I don’t ‘do’ anything that is too steep. I’ve frozen on the side of Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock for no good reason, and there was a place at Arches National Park in Utah that I had to crawl along hugging the rock face – not because it was dangerous but because there was so much ‘something’ emanating off the rock. Mom and I had the same reaction in the Chapel of the Rock parking lot which faces a huge curved cliff face. It’s weird and interesting, neither good nor bad, just weird.

Does this look a trail to you? It's straight down about a mile. Half of us had more sense and the other half got a blister

my kind of trail - flat

self-portrait

Fay Canyon

a colossal and recent rock fall

pictographs from about 1200

petroglyph complete with spider web

 Sinagua ruin

Jim is playing golf at Seven Canyons tomorrow, supposed to be the IMAX of golf courses, and I will probably  cruise some galleries of which there are many. We’ve been dithering about our route home, beginning on Friday, but have pretty much decided to go north from here instead of west as the coast is supposed to have a storm on the weekend and neither of us is keen to head back into the brutal California traffic. North will take us through Salt Lake City and into Idaho, a route we’ve travelled before and that is reasonably easy. Weather dependent of course. It appears we've missed quite a week of snow and cold in Victoria!

Arizona

somewhere between Las Vegas and Scottsdale

We spent the last couple of days in Scottsdale; the Phoenix area feels very comfortable as we have been here quite often. We made the obligatory shopping excursion to Arizona Mills in Tempe, and also stopped at the outlet mall in Anthem on the way north. It’s tough to turn away from the deals when good brand golf shirts, jeans, sweaters, whatever, are running at 70% off and the dollar is at par. That budget that I’ve mentioned at least twice has taken another beating.

As part of our welcome package we were given passes to the Celebration of Fine Art so with no particular plans for the day, we went. It’s held every year in a couple of massive tents at the corner of Mayo Blvd, and Scottsdale Road. There are 100 artists, not represented but actually there working, 7 days a week for 75 days. And the quality of work is outstanding. We worth blown away. I expected to cruise through in about an hour but stayed for four, Jim not so long because he just isn’t as interested. I had really nice conversations with several of the artists including Debbie Edgers Sturges who travels the world for wildlife images to paint. I fell seriously in love with a painting of a lioness that she had photographed in the Masai Mara. I also enjoyed Bruce Marion who does wonderful abstracts and is a lovely guy. Talking to him I realized that this was the first show Ive been to since I haven’t been painting and that I felt sad about it. The artists all seemed happy to be there and to be together. Bruce said they mentor each other and become good friends through the show.

Peggy & Malcolm

We were also able to spend a couple of hours with our friends Malcolm and Peggy Hilcove, always a treat.  Our conversations with them cover a wide range of topics and they are such positive and interesting people, we feel fortunate to call them friends.

Now it’s Saturday afternoon and we are in Sedona. I am looking out the window at a snow shower which is a bit disappointing after all the great weather we’ve had. Oh well; we’ve been expecting it for several days and AZ does need the moisture. 

before the snow, our view

Jim hoping something is going to manifest in the kitchen

snow day

no excuse but to study - Spanish is hard

The closest city to us is Flagstaff and they will get a huge dump of snow from this storm because they are 2000 feet higher than we are even though only about 50 miles away. “Flag” gets real winter every year.  So today and tomorrow we are somewhat restricted by the weather and thanking our stars that we are in a spacious apartment rather than a hotel room. Jim is napping on the couch listening to his IPod tunes and I am avoiding studying Spanish. We got groceries last night and still have some Napa wine so we are settled in for whatever the duration is and looking forward to some spectacular hiking by Monday. The only wrinkle is that, probably because it is Sedona and there are weird air patterns here, our wireless connection is very unstable. Sedona is as famous for ‘vortexes’ as for the red rock scenery and last year 60% of tourists said they were here for some sort of meditative or transformative experience. More about Sedona later...

BLT's

Lots of people think that you can't do much to ruin a bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwich. For me, a BLT is a benchmark of what a restaurant is capable of and they are often very mediocre. You have to have good bacon and it has to be cooked well enough to be crispy without being burnt. The bacon also has to be thin enough so it doesn't just pull out of the sandwich in one big lump, leaving you with a long string of meat, (or under cooked fat, yuk) hanging out of your mouth. The tomato has to be ripe and sweet without being too mushy, and again it has to be thin enough so it you can get a mouthful of it without a mess. There has to be good bread, preferably a multi-grain, and it can't be toasted too much or it cuts the inside of your mouth. And the lettuce has to be fresh and also easy to get a mouthful of. You can see that for me there are many pitfalls in a BLT, many of them related to my small mouth (only small physically, not under exercised!). And I haven't even mentioned the mayonnaise of which there can't be too much or too little. I hate having mayo ooze all over my hands.
Despite all the things that can go wrong one of us often orders a BLT when we are travelling because at least it is recognizable on an unfamiliar menu. The worst ever was in Coulee City, Washington; truly awful and having virtually all the nasty elements I've just mentioned. Jim says he had possibly the best ever on this trip, but we've forgotten where which is a great shame because 'best-evers' deserve to be noted. We are sure it was in Calistoga but not sure which restaurant.
Which bring me back to Las Vegas and the reason for this post.We went to the Carnegie Deli at the Mirage and faced with a huge menu we both opted for a BLT.

this is half of one sandwich!

Good grief! There had to be 2 pounds of bacon in each sandwich. On the upper left part of the plate you can just see the bacon left over from the half I ate. We each ate half and took the rest away with us, in TWO boxes. Next day we had refreshed BLTs; the following day I used a bunch of bacon with some shrimp, mushrooms, onions, lemon juice, and cream cheese to make a pasta  (delicious I might add); and we still had bacon left over. It's nuts. And in a land of excess, this might top the list.

Las Vegas 3

Some more Vegas pics, just because there is so much to see there. Backing up to Sunday evening when we went back to the strip to check a few more things off our to-do list. The Grand Canal Shops at the Venetian are definitely worth a visit. Not that we went into any stores, but the whole area, huge of course, is tricked out to look like Venice and does a pretty good job. The story is that some couple (either very well known to all of you or a total myth) with a LOT of money went to Venice on their honeymoon and she loved it so much he said he would build her a replica.

this is indoors, seriously

 Then we went to Wynn to see the somewhat overrated Lake of Dreams. The hotel itself is gorgeous but the Lake show was too short and not all that interesting, but weird and fun technology.

light fixtures at the Parasol Bar in the Wynn hotel - cool

By then we were really hungry since the bar only sold pretzels, and we had had about enough of the crowds and crazies, so we went back to the resort.

Valentines Day took us to things we are more inspired by. we went to Red Rock Canyon which is only 20 minutes from the Strip. It was about 25C and sunny and it is a spectacular place. We did the scenic drive of about 13 miles and as an afterthought dropped into the visitor center. It was so much of an afterthought that we left the camera in the car and it has to be the most beautiful visitor center I have ever seen; I've seen lots. In front of you when you walk in is a 25 foot long window that frames the calico hills, and there are wonderful sculptures of various animals. Even better is the outside interpretive area.

great light and great rocks

this sandstone is interestingly striped

part of the 'calico' section

And then on our last night in Vegas we went up to the roof of our building to have some champagne and enjoy the vista. It was chilly and we were the only people there - fabulous.

Las Vegas 2

What can I say about Las Vegas that will make any sense? Probably not much and many of you have been here already so have your own impressions. I can understand that some people are snooty about how outrageous it is in a Disneyland/world sort of way but also in the Disney style it is a lot of fun.

Excalibur at night

entrance to the Luxor with the pyramid behind

New York New York "skyline"

top of the escalator in New York New York

The Venetian Casino

Elvis and David Bowie!

 And you know what – it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. It’s a place to party and have fun and everyone is hustling for your first and last buck. There is no hypocrisy about the presentation which is quite refreshing.

Each major casino property is enormous, and each one is trying to outdo or at least keep up with the others. Parking is plentiful and free; washrooms, except at the Luxor, are also plentiful; there is always something to do or look at; the architecture is amazing; shopping is great; people watching is the best anywhere. Yes, the shows are expensive, the food portions are ridiculously large, people smoke indoors, traffic is nuts on Friday and Saturday evenings, and there are strange groups of bachelor and bachelorette pre-wedding parties, (I’ve never understood the “last days of freedom before I am chained down forever” school of thought).

You have to be fit to visit Vegas and except occasionally at night we are not seeing women tottering around on 5 inch heels. We’ve walked and walked and walked; just to explore one property from end to end can be a kilometre. Leave the bar shoes at home!

inside the Venetian

Our timeshare resort Tahiti Village is immediately south of the airport, about 10 minutes from the strip and there is a free shuttle every half hour. So we have a peaceful apartment to retreat to and today we are just hanging out here before taking in some of the freebie shows: the volcano at the Mirage, the fountains at the Bellagio, Lake of Dreams at Wynn and a non-free , gondola ride at the Venetian. Three of the four main stage shows we’ve attended were fabulous, the fourth, Criss Angel, was pretty awful. Some of his illusions were really good but it was filled in by tasteless and tacky humour, very loud music and no sign of the Cirque component that is supposed to be part of it. We were very disappointed as we expected to be wowed. On the other hand, Donny and Marie Osmond were fantastic (I wasn’t a huge fan but am now), as were Vegas the Show and the Jersey Boys. A real bonus with Donny & Marie was that they performed at the Flamingo which is the last theatre of its type in Vegas. So cool to see it and we had a booth to ourselves!

the Flamingo theatre

We are beginning to wind down from the excitement here, leaving on Tuesday for a couple of days in Scottsdale before going to Sedona for a week of hiking in that beautiful area. So far all is well!

Las Vegas, day 1

We’ll be smarter tomorrow; we walked too much and are more than a little weary. That might be almost enough to say about today except for the photos...

I'm here for the architecture and to gawk & squawk; so far so good!

the conservatory at the Bellagio was decked out for Chinese New Year

inside the Forum Shops at Caesar's

each property is enormous

also at the Bellagio, a Chihuly art piece

the grounds at our timeshare

a bit chilly for the pool but should be warmer by the weekend

our living room

the Venetian

Oh, and we went to "Vegas, the Show" tonight at Planet Hollywood and loved it. The singing and dancing were superb.

Southern California

We left Napa reluctantly as the weather was still warm and summery and it is a relaxing place to be. We paused in the town of Napa which is only ho-hum, struggling a bit by the look of it and not as pretty as tiny Calistoga. Then our final wine stop was at Domaine Carneros for sparkling wine. We spent a very pleasant hour on the sunny terrace with a tasting of 3 of their champagnes and a plate of cheese. The camera batteries had died so our only photos are from below, when e got back to the car.

this has a terrace to drool over

We had a quick transition from the sublime to the awful, being launched into heavy traffic and about 7 interchange transitions to get us around San Francisco and over to Highway 99 toward Bakersfield. Having frittered away the morning we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us and it wasn’t fun but it was interesting. The traffic was relentless with sometimes 12 lanes, 6 in each direction, but beyond the traffic was food production on a scale that I had never imagined. It was like driving on a different planet, one devoted solely to food, and I had visions of it as a penal colony with no time off for good behaviour. We drove through hundreds of miles of orchards, vineyards, and cattle pens. The orchards must smell fantastic when they are in bloom, but the cattle pens most certainly did not. It seemed to be a dairy area rather than beef (there was a Kraft Foods plant) but the visible conditions and smell were enough to make one vegetarian. The vineyards were for raisins, miles of them, with a Sunmaid plant in the middle of it all and other than the obvious orange groves we didn’t know what the other trees were. And the land was completely flat; move over Saskatchewan! We were very happy to get off the road just at dark.

The first hour out of Bakersfield was pretty much the same level of traffic as the previous afternoon but most of that continued south to Los Angeles while we turned east to the real desert and Las Vegas. It was interesting to see Edwards Air Force Base and to go from the mega population area of coastal southern California to the barren emptiness of the south eastern part of the state. And right on the state line, there can’t be a centimetre to spare, is Primm, Nevada with a huge outlet shopping centre and a couple of casinos. There is nothing but empty desert for miles, than bam a consumer/gambling centre, and then desert again. Nuts.

dust blowing

a Joshua Tree

the biggest wind-farm we've ever seen!

in the middle of absolutely nowhere