Sedona
Part 1: Departure Day
I turned 40 earlier this month. Because of the pandemic, I celebrated the milestone intimately with my parents and sister, but not without a plan pending.
Since I am lucky to get two weeks off for Spring Break at the end of March, I postponed my birthday plans until this time. As much as I wanted to return to Death Valley, my sister Jackie and I decided to follow through with the idea she originally had back in 2020. We had briefly talked about taking a road trip to Sedona, Arizona with a small group but nothing ever came to fruition because the world shut down on Friday, March 13, 2020.
Two years later, vaccinated and boosted, we were ready to venture out again. We settled on the travel dates and booked three nights in Sedona. We decided to make it a sisters trip in hopes of maximizing relaxation, cleansing, and soul-searching in order to undo a bit of the internal, mental, and emotional chaos the pandemic had caused each of us.
While Jackie made preparations to be out of her office, I asked friends for recommendations on things to do, see, and visit in Sedona. I created a list with the information I collected and plotted points on a map.
Jackie runs on Mexican time so I knew there was absolutely no way we would hit the road for the almost seven-hour drive before noon. On travel day number one, she messaged me panicked around 9am because her apartment, for the third time in three weeks, had no running water. I recommended she forget about taking a shower since we’d be in the car all day but she’s a cat and needs to be clean at all times. I was so confident in her timing that I even went to the mall to replace the battery on my watch and still had time to grab lunch for us on the way home.
Fed, packed, and fueled, I entered the freeway en route to Sedona at 3pm. Although I jokingly anticipated a similar departure time, I had hoped for something closer to 1pm. But there was nothing I could do but remain patient and hope the tuna sandwich would give me enough energy to reach Phoenix before it got too dark.
I had semi-dreaded having to fill up in Blythe because it was home to The Ghost of Christmas Past. I had imagined grabbing a quick bite at one of the fast food places and coming face-to-face with my ex’s nieces or nephews. Luckily, the gas gauge on my car displayed three-quarters after the almost three-hour drive. I pointed out the exit I took with my ex to visit his parents to Jackie and breathed a sigh of relief. We entered Arizona, drove over the Colorado River, and stopped in Quartzite, per a recommendation on my list, for a pee and stretch break.
This is where things got iffy. Jackie and I had not booked a room for the first night because we did not know how far we would get. A friend had discouraged me from staying in Phoenix so I asked Jackie to search for rooms along route 60 that cut a corner to Sedona. She found a decent deal in Prescott, which we learned rhymes with “biscuit” and not “Scott” thanks to local radio. And thank goodness for that because we wanted to bring as little attention to us as possible. We drove along an endless plain road, passing a handful of ghost towns, with the sunset behind us until the sky turned black.
That was when, unexpectedly, we started driving at an incline. Before we knew it, the switchbacks had made Jackie carsick. Google Maps had failed to inform us that we had to cut through a ponderosa mountain to get to Prescott. By the time we arrived in the valley, I was queasy too. We saw two foxes in a residential area before stopping at McDonald’s for some good ol’ nuggets and arrived at our hotel around 9pm.
Our suite had a kitchenette and living room. It was the perfect space to spend three nights but unfortunately, we were only there for one. We made a mental note not to compare it to our Sedona accomodations because we were going to be hiking anyway. I had a sour beer with my nuggets, showered, and hit the very comfortable bed. As tired as I was, I was woken up around 4am on our second travel day. The room, like most, was next to a main highway and the loud trucks had me tossing and turning until the sun was up. We got ready and grabbed breakfast downstairs. Trying to take advantage of our short stop, Jackie found a lake nearby. We stopped by for about an hour before heading to our destination.
