Well rested after a good night’s sleep at the Hilton, we caught a cab to the airport to pick up our hire car at just after 8 am. We were all signed up and on our way by 8.50am, heading East towards Phoenix Arizona.
It turned out to be a much more interesting drive than I expected. We took a little while to get out of San Diego before climbing up into the mountains, where the scenery is very rocky and rugged. It is a reasonably steep climb up to about 4000 ft, and then a decline onto plains on the other side.
I expected it to be more desolate, but there were some very fertile areas with large irrigated farms and impressive canal systems feeding them. We travel very close to the Mexican boarder for most of the early part of our trip, with the first major town being El Centro, which is just on the USA border North of Mexicali, Mexico. the other surprise was that we drooped to around 20 ft be;ow sea level on the other side of the mountains for a short while.
We had restroom stop in Yuma, Arizona, and bought some water (the temperature was in the mid 30’s by now). Yuma is on the boarder of California and Arizona, just over the State Line (The Colorado River). Our next stop was for lunch at Gila Bend, Arizona. It was pretty basic, but we needed fuel and there was a Burger King there. Not far out of Gila Bend, we had to go through a border control inspection point, where the officer spent quite a few minutes having a chat about all the places we had visited as he was flicking through our passports. I guess they are not big travellers out there.
From there we turned of Highway 8, and headed for Phoenix, Arizona.
Out ultimate destination is Sedona, North of Phoenix and on the way to the Grand Canyon. We eventually reached there at around 5 pm (san Diego time), or 6 pm local time. We couldn’t understand why the sun was setting at 4.30 pm.
Approaching Sedona
It was almost dark when we checked in to our Hotel, after a very long days drive. The distance was over 700km, but it was mountainous in parts and took us about 8 hours, including breaks. Even though it was almost dark, the scenery as you enter Sedona is stunning.
The next challenge was finding somewhere to eat. It is Sunday evening, and we don’t want to drive 4 or 5 miles to get a meal so head off walking in the direction of the town . Our Hotel is on the Southern side of town, and we later discovered that the main centre is at the North. Nevertheless we wandered off, and a helpful local told us there was a place open just down the road a bit, called The Barking Frog (it was a Mexican / American Restaurant). We finally got there, after walking for about a mile, wandered in, and found it was packed. There were people lined up waiting and we were told the waiting time was about 40 minutes.
We left despondently, and noticed another place across the road called “the Golden Goose”, so we headed over to try our chances there. It was also very busy, but the wait was only 15 -30 minutes, so we settled in to the bar and waited.
It turned out to be great. Very good food, reasonably priced and the waitresses were a scream. We had more food than we needed and walked the mile or so home to walk some of it off.
No comments:
Post a Comment