Raising Arizona

After an eventful family gathering in Zion, we bid farewell to Ale and Dad and pulled out the maps to chart out our next stop. To our delight, our GPS coordinates put us just north of Grand Central Polygamyville, the towns of Hilldale and Colorado City. Warren Jeffs put these two interesting communities and their “religious” beliefs on everyone’s radar with his arrest back in 2006. We had hoped to give Sierra the opportunity to live out his golden years with nine wives, but couldn’t find him a polygamous dog that had wandered outside any of the walled compounds to start his harem. A little disappointed, we settled for lunch at the Merry Wives Café and a few solid afternoon hours of some amazing people watching.

We drown most of the daylight hours idling the dusty streets at the Utah/Arizona border and feeling oddly out of place. However, we did make it to the north rim of the Grand Canyon just as the sun was settling on the horizon. At 9000 feet, the alpine forest was thick, the air was cool and the views down into that giant hole were spectacular. The following night, after a 200 mile drive, we camped just 10 miles away (as the crow flies) on the south rim.

With a couple route options south of the Grand Canyon, we were easily lured towards Sedona as Judy (Nathalie’s sister’s mother-in-law) offered us a night in her creek-side cabin. Winding down Oak Creek Canyon towards Sedona, we quickly fell in love with the place that was recently voted (by Conde Nast) the most beautiful place in America.

Once in town, we stopped at a tourist booth for directions and left with reservations to attend a time-share lecture. Not exactly what we were looking to do, but once we figured out what the guy was talking about, it was too late and he had already signed us up. Luckily, we were able to turn down the hard sell and left our lecture with a wad of cash for wasting everyone’s time. Instead of saving our new-found wealth for gas, we immediately headed for the nicest restaurant in Sedona (L’Auberge) and blew our wad (and then some!) on an incredible meal that will never be ousted from our lifetime’s top ten list.