If you are like Jean and I, almost everywhere we vacation we ask ourselves, ‘Could we live here?’ So far on this trip out in the Southwest no location has struck us as a, this is it place. While Marble Canyon has its solitude and Flagstaff has its great location and beautiful scenery, we hadn’t happened upon the perfect town, that is until yesterday when we drove out of the forest of beautiful Oak Creek Canyon and cast our eyes upon Sedona, Arizona.
If ever there were a nearly perfect place that you may want to live, it could be Sedona, AZ. Quite literally from the moment we drove past the Welcome To Sedona sign we both absolutely fell in love with this place. The lush mountain forests with red rock spires jutting up above the greenery, the beautiful views from just about any place in town, the multitude of things to do here and the architecture that blends buildings right into the landscape of this area are all completely captivating. The only thing that isn’t captivating is the $300,000 average price for a home here. That may be one reason only 11,000 people have chosen to make Sedona their home.
Never mind the steep price for housing, our day began with a drive out to Chapel Of The Holy Cross a small, but amazing church built right into the red Navajo sandstone of the mountains. It took nearly an act of Congress to get this church built because it resides in one of the most picturesque locations in the city. The view from the chapel is nothing short of spectacular and it is well worth visiting.
Chapel of the Holy Cross
We next grabbed some lunch and were heading out to Crescent Moon Ranch to get a good look at Cathedral Rock, but found an ideal hill overlooking the Cathedral spires and avoided the $9 charge per car to get into the park. Not only was this the perfect spot for a picnic, it was amazingly clean, as is the rest of Sedona. It is remarkable that we were out in the middle of nowhere a few miles from town in a place where people had obviously parked their vehicles and walked up the hill and there was no trash, as in none. That was another thing we loved about Sedona, even for all the tourists that come through here (as Jean and I did) the place is nearly spotless clean. It is as if everyone goes above and beyond to keep this place tidy. We even noticed several businesses that had people sweeping sidewalks and parking lots, picking up trash in a Disney, spit-shined sort of way.
We next visited Exposures Fine Art Gallery featuring top quality art from only world class artists. If you have ever picked up any art magazine that featured the best of the best, some of their art is probably on display here. Everything in the gallery is beautiful, of the highest quality art and is priced in the thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is almost intimidating to walk through Exposures as an art concierge (there’s probably a better term) follows you around. I’m sure they do that to keep en eye on the riff-raff, and with our nearly clashing Tye-dye shirts, I’m sure Jean and I appeared to be riff-raff to the staff (Did I almost make some poetry there?).
After spending several hours in Sedona, it was time to drive back to Flagstaff and as we were heading out of town, I said to Jean, “Do you think they’d mind if we drove about 5 mph all the way through town just to take it all in?” It really is that beautiful here. We did stop one more place as we were leaving when we noticed a Starbucks overlooking a beautiful red rock cliff formation and hung out for about an hour as we grabbed a tea and sat on the porch overlooking the mountains.
If Jean and I ever skip town, the first place to look for us would be in Sedona, Arizona.
Tags: Destinations