Tina and I are now in Arizona, staying at our condo in the NW corner of the Phoenix area. The weather has been great with temps in the 90’s, zero clouds, light winds. Just darn near perfect.
We saw on the news that the aspen leaves in the mountains were changing colors so we decided to take a 3-day, 2-night vacation to Sedona, AZ. For those of you not familiar with Sedona, it’s known for its vortexes and for the red rock mountains in the area. We found a place on AirBNB at a private home, booked it and Tuesday drove the 2 hours up to Sedona.
We’d been there before, 9 years ago on our honeymoon. It was nice to go back, see the same beautiful scenery and take some off road trails to see places we hadn’t before.
The place we stayed was much better than we had expected and the owner of the home was a great source of information about things to see and places to go. The view out the windows was great…
As we drove around this is what we saw. These pictures don't do the beauty of the red rock formations justice. It's just hard to capture how magnificent they are....
We took what turned out to be a rough road to go see an old Indian ruins. The road wasn’t horrible, but it definitely was a road for 4x4’s. The ruins were about 11 miles off the highway and it took about 2.5 hours to get there. Here are two shots of the ruins and some hieroglyphics.
While we were getting ready to leave the parking lot three ATV’s pulled in and parked. We left and headed back out the trail. A short time later these three ATV's were right behind me, so I pulled over. They went blasting past and disappeared in a cloud of dust. We continued on but about a mile or so later one of them was running back towards us waving his arms. He told us that one of the ATV’s had flipped and the driver was injured. We pulled up to where it had flipped. I parked and Tina stayed in the truck.
The driver was sitting on the side of the road holding his left arm. The people there seemed to be more interested in getting the ATV back on its wheels than taking care of the driver. I asked him how he was doing and he said “Not good. My arm is broken and I'm bleeding.”
I suggested he and his wife get in our truck and we would take him to the hospital. We had about 8 miles of the rough road to travel before we got to the highway. I figured our truck would be a softer ride and it was air conditioned, something necessary on the 95* day. We took off and VERY slowly drove. Every time we hit a bump he would moan. I was trying to drive a fine line between driving slow to ease his pain and getting him to medical help as soon as possible. After what seemed like hours of driving we finally got to the highway. At that point I took off and drove about 80 mph on the trip to the emergency room. We called ahead and told the ER people what we were bringing to them so they could do any prep work before we got there.
As soon as we pulled up and got into the ER one of the nurses came out and took them both back to the treatment areas.
The guy's wife called us later and told us that the x-rays showed the bone in his lower arm was broken in two places and one piece of bone was sticking out through the skin. They had transported them to a bigger facility that was better suited to treat him. They were going to put in at least two pins in the bone. OUCH!
After we dropped them off at the hospital the first thing we did was find a place to have a cold beer and let the adrenaline go away.
The next morning (our last) we drove to the old mining town of Jerome. It's supposed to be one of the most haunted towns in the country. We didn't see any ghosts, but did see some beautiful scenery and a LOT of old buildings, most of which had been converted into tourist traps selling anything and everything. After a couple hour walking tour of Jerome we headed back home.
All things considered it was a good trip.
We saw on the news that the aspen leaves in the mountains were changing colors so we decided to take a 3-day, 2-night vacation to Sedona, AZ. For those of you not familiar with Sedona, it’s known for its vortexes and for the red rock mountains in the area. We found a place on AirBNB at a private home, booked it and Tuesday drove the 2 hours up to Sedona.
We’d been there before, 9 years ago on our honeymoon. It was nice to go back, see the same beautiful scenery and take some off road trails to see places we hadn’t before.
The place we stayed was much better than we had expected and the owner of the home was a great source of information about things to see and places to go. The view out the windows was great…
As we drove around this is what we saw. These pictures don't do the beauty of the red rock formations justice. It's just hard to capture how magnificent they are....
We took what turned out to be a rough road to go see an old Indian ruins. The road wasn’t horrible, but it definitely was a road for 4x4’s. The ruins were about 11 miles off the highway and it took about 2.5 hours to get there. Here are two shots of the ruins and some hieroglyphics.
While we were getting ready to leave the parking lot three ATV’s pulled in and parked. We left and headed back out the trail. A short time later these three ATV's were right behind me, so I pulled over. They went blasting past and disappeared in a cloud of dust. We continued on but about a mile or so later one of them was running back towards us waving his arms. He told us that one of the ATV’s had flipped and the driver was injured. We pulled up to where it had flipped. I parked and Tina stayed in the truck.
The driver was sitting on the side of the road holding his left arm. The people there seemed to be more interested in getting the ATV back on its wheels than taking care of the driver. I asked him how he was doing and he said “Not good. My arm is broken and I'm bleeding.”
I suggested he and his wife get in our truck and we would take him to the hospital. We had about 8 miles of the rough road to travel before we got to the highway. I figured our truck would be a softer ride and it was air conditioned, something necessary on the 95* day. We took off and VERY slowly drove. Every time we hit a bump he would moan. I was trying to drive a fine line between driving slow to ease his pain and getting him to medical help as soon as possible. After what seemed like hours of driving we finally got to the highway. At that point I took off and drove about 80 mph on the trip to the emergency room. We called ahead and told the ER people what we were bringing to them so they could do any prep work before we got there.
As soon as we pulled up and got into the ER one of the nurses came out and took them both back to the treatment areas.
The guy's wife called us later and told us that the x-rays showed the bone in his lower arm was broken in two places and one piece of bone was sticking out through the skin. They had transported them to a bigger facility that was better suited to treat him. They were going to put in at least two pins in the bone. OUCH!
After we dropped them off at the hospital the first thing we did was find a place to have a cold beer and let the adrenaline go away.
The next morning (our last) we drove to the old mining town of Jerome. It's supposed to be one of the most haunted towns in the country. We didn't see any ghosts, but did see some beautiful scenery and a LOT of old buildings, most of which had been converted into tourist traps selling anything and everything. After a couple hour walking tour of Jerome we headed back home.
All things considered it was a good trip.