Wednesday, March 10, 2010

3-10-2010 Cottonwood back to Sedona to Flagstaff






















Oh boy, I made the mistake of telling Kathi she is spending to much of our vacation time on her laptop creating the blog. We all know where that conversation went! So I volunteered to do today's blog.

Our bike will never be the same. Since leaving Wisconsin we have put 2,305 miles on our bike, 1,997 on the Draftmaster and 8 miles of rubber on the road. I have to admit we did miss a golden opportunity to do some ideal biking on highway 69 south of Canyon City along the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. We didn't have our bike clothes on and didn't have a place to change. That was a big mistake as we haven't seen good biking conditions since.

Needless to say our vacation isn't going according to plan but we are having a great time anyway. The original plan was to drive south until we got to reasonably good biking conditions. Nobody told me we would need passports. Hopefully in the next few days we will get far enough south that we can do some biking.

Today, when we left Cottonwood we ate breakfast at Denny's and then headed back towards Sedona. First thing that caught our interest was Red Rock State Park. We went to the visitor center and from there decided to do some hiking. We did about a 3 mile hike on Eagle's Nest Trail route and saw a lot of beautiful scenery and also got some exercise to boot. We also watched a 30 minute video of the Sedona area (of course, I fell asleep for part of it).

After the hike we ate a picnic lunch near the visitor center and had beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and watched storm clouds move in and out of the area. It was so neat to see sunshine to our left and thunderstorms to our right and snow showers straight ahead. All at the same time. After eating lunch we headed into Sedona and went to the Holy Cross Chapel on the hill and then decided to give Oak Creek Canyon (route 89A) another try since we weren't able to see anything on our way down from Flagstaff on Tuesday due to the weather.

Today turned out to be the same type of weather conditions in Oak Creek Canyon as Tuesday with snow a good deal of the way to Flagstaff. We made it to Flagstaff without any problems and stopped and picked up some groceries and checked into the Days Inn.

Who knows what we will do tomorrow!

Happy Trails!

4 comments:

  1. Don't feel to sorry for John - first he went to type the blog and was almost done and then accidently deleted it before he saved it. So then I felt sorry for him and then typed it as he told me what to say. Kathi (LOL) We are having a wonderful time together.

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  2. Can't tell you how many times I've done that writing my bikejournal. It's nice to get John's viewpoint on occasion (not that I could ever live without Kathi's contributions). The weather here in Ohio has turned beautiful and we just got a nice 30 milers in. It made me think of what a great time we all had at the Solomon Tandem Rally a couple of years ago in March. I hope your weather improves soon so I can see some riding pics!

    Gary

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  3. Spring has arrived in MN. We are itching to ride. The bikes are currently getting their yearly check-up but due back Saturday. Let's hope the mild weather continues and the skis are stored for the season. Sorry to hear the weather is not cooperating for you but it's great to hear you are seeing some awesome scenery. The pictures are gorgeous!

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  4. Forgot to mention: I love the hats!

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