A Little Vacation 3: A Rooster, A Hike, Shopping, Scrabble, & A Theory

It was a lovely wake-up call after a night of interrupted sleep. Such an improvement! This place is not just a huge orchard with scattered houses, a gazebo, and a river running by, it’s got roosters! It was a quick kick back to my childhood. While breakfast was being prepared, one lone one gave a few last cock-a-doodles before giving up apparently for the day. At least one time he crowed yesterday my friend was outside and also heard it. I must be the only one to hear it/them from inside the house. This morning there was no crowing, at least not until after 7:15. Now they are making up for lost time. But it’s very cloudy today, so maybe that’s it. While I’m waiting for everybody else to wake up, it’s time to document yesterday.

We gals decided to head over to Sedona for the day. The end errand was to be shopping for supper and other meals, avoiding restaurants as much as possible. We needed taco fixings, along with a few other staples and the ingredients for Steve’s BATs. This stands for a sandwich, Bacon, Avocado, and Tomato. Tell people you’re eating bats and you get really strange looks, and that’s from the polite ones. Explain, and they start looking hungry. But the tomatoes and avocados have to be nicely ripe, so shopping almost always needs to be done a day or two ahead.

It was the trip along the way that was to be interesting. Camera Time! Red Rock State Park was our first destination, and a hike down to and along the river was planned. By the way, the river in question is the same one that passes here in Cornville, Oak Creek. In Sedona and northward it’s surrounded by lots of the most amazing and beautiful red rock cliffs. Hence the park name.

First lesson: Az state parks charge per person, not per car like national parks. We left the guys at “home” so it was cheaper. {They were just going to do guy things, which mostly, we thought, meant sitting around chatting about life and fishing and stuff. They wouldn’t actually go fishing. Steve’s gear was in the back of the car I was driving. (Oops?) We figured no problem because no licenses, no bait, and no location known where a flat and short walk to the creek was available. Here it’s lots of steps down. Lots. The owner doesn't know of an alternative site for them. So no go.}

Since our last visit to the park, 2016 as an earlier perusing of my photos attested to, much has changed. The roads are all on high ground, so any hike to Oak Creek has lots of vertical in it. No real biggie, thankfully. The roads are different, the old water wheel is nowhere to be found, and the lovely spot with all the tree roots where I took several shots of those and the creek was… we’re not sure. Somewhere else. Not within driving distance. Likely not within our walking distance. Once we parked, a newly constructed visitor center surrounded by lovely AZ style xeriscaping and feeders for myriads of birds was our first sight on our path to the creek. As we strolled past that into open land, we had a distant view of Cathedral Rock, though at this angle it’s very apparent it's at least three different jutting rock clumps.

Further along a side path presented itself. Looking carefully at the sign next to it, dogs were not allowed, bicycles were not allowed, nor something-something-else already forgotten, but hikers were welcomed. Down we went, zigging and zagging, the path made to keep our descent as smooth and gradual as possible. Sycamores lined this part of it, their bark and branches creating both foregrounds and backgrounds, particularly for orange lichen-covered branches of shorter dark-barked trees in the foreground. The orange was amazingly bright, the contrast incredible.

The hike along the creek was paved with flat red rocks for the most part, but footing could still be tricky for the unwary as the stray one poked up. We were warned away by signs from both the creek and the cliffs rising on our other side. Construction has been going on down there, mostly across the creek from where we were. Large areas displayed felled trees, opening up new habitat, and a narrow bridge across to it had only stubby pylons left to give evidence of former crossing. The creek was rushing steadily along, soothing us with its splashing, in places smoothing out enough for watery photo opportunities of tree reflections. One section had lots of boulders just under the water, making a rainbow of green moss (algae?), red/orange rocks, and bright blue reflections of sky for a bit now that clouds had started breaking up. The photos turned out to show the colors better than I thought the camera caught at the time.

The one disappointment was a sign “pointing to” petroglyphs. The information was great: how, when, and why they were carved along here. Unfortunately, despite an illustration of rock shapes and what the figures looked like, neither of us could locate them. I explored some more while she kept studying the sign, the rocks, the sign, the rocks, hoping for revelation. Alas.  Somebody must have vandalized them long since, and the sign sits there as a memento of what was, a cautionary tale of vandalism. Otherwise, the sign is just a random cruel tease.

I’d reached my limit of desired exploration by that point, so we agreed to head back. We stopped near restrooms, and had lunch in the parked car, discussing the rest of our plans and enjoying the scenery. The road the park is on is a loop off 89A, so we decided to continue on it and reconnect. Hopefully we’d have better views of Cathedral Rock on the way.

First we found a small pullout for long views of rock formations across the valley, and enjoyed some photo ops. Rounding a curve, suddenly a very garish building appeared, perched on the top wall face of a red cliff. Both of us were shocked by that. Most everything blends in to the scenery here, done artfully in the colors of the surrounding rocks. This was offensively tasteless, bright blood red and flashy chrome! It looked likely to fall off and crash onto several buildings immediately below. Was it even safe? Who would build way up there? More to the point, how did they get away with something so ghastly and ugly? Sedona is known for zoning that keeps buildings blending into natural scenery. This perched pecadillo is a blight upon the landscape, dare I say a blasphemy to the rocks themselves, whether one has spiritual beliefs in the weird vortexes there or not. As the road passed under it, we saw the buildings below which had been previously concealed by rocks and trees. Apparently there was some construction company making its mark there. Some features of these buildings shared common characteristics with the monstrosity above. That explains who has the money to get away with this ugliness.

Further around the curve, we finally found a tiny pullout where we could get a decent shot of Cathedral Rock, though not the best, classic one. Turning back to the car I had a view of the back of the monstrosity and took a shot. It was so bad I just had to.

It was time for town. First there was a bead store, where I found the yellow-green seed beads I needed to make the “stems” of the flowers in my current jewelry, and a couple strings of interesting blue agates I thought I could find a use for. During checkout I expressed disappointment on not finding  turquoise beads any more, just nuggets, so she pointed to a back corner of the store.”They’re from China but they’re real turquoise.” Umm, yeah, I’ve bought Chinese ”turquoise” and it’s actually been dyed howlite. China sells "purple turquoise" that way too. I decide to check them out, lifted a group of strands in my hands, and decided they didn’t have the heft to be “really real.” I passed on buying these, but then she offered to direct me to a local store selling AZ turquoise,  cautioning me that those would be expensive.  Of course they would. I declined, needing to sit in my seat in the car while my friend finished shopping, much more than I needed to buy turquoise.

Since we were in town, I called - finally! - a friend back in Minnesota who’s been in the hospital for a while and will be there longer. Explaining the phone situation, we agreed that I’d call her again on the weekend when we returned to a real cell signal- and hopefully wi-fi again. My laptop still gets no signal, and the owners of the property were in yesterday trying to fix their router but no go. It sits here in this centrally located house but serves a few other buildings as well on the property.

Next port of call was a Crystals store. It holds various shapes of everything crystal you can imagine, as well as lots of other non-crystaline rocks. I fell in love with some slices of ammonites, even dinner plate sized. I’d bought a whole one here back in 2016, opalized to show large swaths of red in proper light. These slices tempting me now were apparently from beds where thousands or more had piled on top of each other, small through huge randomly, and the cuts showed the pileups. I looked at one of the price tags on a smaller one and again decided to spend my funds elsewhere. Suddenly a couple containers of polished malachite rocks appeared and after much sorting I left with the four best small samples in the store. I’d informed my friend earlier that they were formed in caves as either stalactites or stalagmites, thus explaining the circles and stripes of various greens. Mine were spectacular, the features fine enough to demonstrate their origins.

Last stop was the grocery store. By then I was more than ready for using a scooter cart, something I resort to seldom these days, so the process was fairly pleasant. We found a hundred bucks worth of necessities for the next two days, three nights. Much cheaper than restaurants, and my friend is a great cook and enjoys doing it. We let her. Dinner was tacos, hard or soft shelled choices, with about 9 toppings. As soon as we were all stuffed, with just one lone shell remaining, she brought out a bowl of mixed fruit for dessert. Looks great. We hope it still does today, since she was the only one with any room left last night.

We found out that our guys had gone out on their own excursion during the day while we were gone. They now had fishing licenses. And since wires had apparently crossed, they brought a bag of groceries back as well. Apparently Cottonwood has a WalMart, serving both needs. Of course Steve’s shopping scooter cart broke down so he had a long hike through the store and back to the car, arriving back here in misery. His buddy wasn’t in a much better state, but in his case, it was a bad mood due to getting lost on their drive back. (It was too early for them to realize that there would be no fishing after all, due to lack of a place with easy creek access for dropping a line. The licenses are good for a full year, though, so maybe if they come back in less than 12 months...?)

Now here’s where I take my turn to point out that having a mental map of the area, along with a good sense of direction, is the most reliable. It turned out that his GPS wasn't working. Nobody’s was anywhere. No cell service. No internet service. After attempting to head back here - via the wrong direction - they finally pulled into a Ford dealership ask directions. That’s when they found there was no internet everywhere. This time the human-given directions worked, and they arrived about an hour after we returned. I’d been busy using the time going through my pictures, culling and adjusting and cropping. Other than word processing off-line, which is how I’m “blogging” without being able to post, it’s about all I can do on my laptop. No email, no news, no weather, not even my handy Google as a shortcut for spell checking, where by the time I type what I think I'm looking for Google offers me the correct version. Either that or I'm so far off that it has no clue what I'm looking for and have to try a synonym or something.

Now, hearing about the lack of internet in a wide area, I recalled something I’d read on the internet before we left for this trip. I love a site called spaceweather.com. I started reading it years ago for their photos from around the world of auroras. They do so much more however. I never heard of sprites before, for example. Or noctilucent clouds which I’d finally seen last summer. The previous week’s featured event was a huge sunspot explosion of the far side of the sun, but so enormous that astronomers were catching shots of what was being hurled into space. For three days I followed it. While it couldn’t affect us - yet - it was on the part of the sun which was turning our way. My last look before unplugging didn’t show it stopping yet. So, my theory. I can’t check it due to lack of communication, but I figure it’s possible we’ve had (are having) the results of a CME. Better known as a coronal mass ejection. They are known for disrupting satellites and all sorts of communications. Alternately, it’s just a hell of a place down in a hole in the Verde Valley to try to get ahold of anybody for anything.

(Spoiler alert: A CME wasn’t it. Back in communication land, I checked that out. Could the Sedona vortexes be on the move? LOL)

Good thing we brought the Super Scrabble board and scrabble dictionary along. We played until bed. Steve dropped out first, needing sleep and something other than the chair he was in for his back. We three kept on going, until no more tiles were in the bag. I finished mine, but we were playing by “fun” rules rather than keeping score so the game went on. My friend was next and she used her last three tiles. Steve’s buddy was too tired to think, had a full 7 in his tray, and gave up. I asked if he minded if I took the tray to see if I could play any. I could. One letter here, one there, either making two-letter words or filling between two rows for a three letter one. Then bed for all of us.