Mossy Cottage Knits

Day Three of Grandpa's Endless Slideshow

Good Lord! Who knew it would take as many days to post these entries as the vacation was long! Either we did a lot in Arizona or I’m extremely long-winded. (Uh, no comments from those of you who know me, especially from you, Cuzz…) The good news is that the slide projector is starting to overheat and should go on the fritz very soon.

Tuesday
Our Grand Plan for Tuesday was to drive to the Painted Desert and the Crater Thingy, a Holy Grail of mine for a long time. But we had been doing a hellacious amount of driving over the previous three days and, besides, we hadn’t had a chance to tour Sedona itself and bless the tacky tourist shops with a liberal infusion of our untold wealth (har, har). And a further besides, we weren’t overly impressed by the Crater Thingy’s web site, and we learned that the Crater Thingy was privately owned and controlled, which meant that how/when/where you can actually hike to and see into the crater itself was a little iffy. So shopping it was.

We learned very quickly that the two sides of the main shopping drag in Sedona are identical, almost as if only one side were developed and then a giant hand wielding a ginormous mouse copied it, rotated it, and pasted it to the other side. In fact, a coupla companies seem to own every single store on the strip, which means that Store A sells e-xactly the same thing as Store B which sells e-xactly the same thing as Store C which sells e-xactly... In fact, after a while it started to feel as if there were only one set of clerks for the entire town who would magically disappear from whatever store we had just left and rematerialize in the store we were just entering. Spookay!

We did, however, find a coupla good stores, and, if you are ever headed Sedona-way, I strongly recommend dropping in at “Uniquely Southwest.” They carry beautiful, legitimate, high-end yet not overly expensive pottery, rugs and jewelry that respect and celebrate the beauty and spirit of Native American art. No glow-in-the-dark kokopellis, no candy cleverly marketed as antelope poop, no velvet paintings of the red rocks and a whirling vortex. Besides, it’s where I fulfilled a dream that I didn’t even know I had: I purchased a piece of black-on-black Mata Ortiz pottery. (Now, watch me very deftly relate all of this to knitting: The only reason I knew about Mata Ortiz pottery was because I stumbled across it a couple of years ago when surfing the Net for South American textile patterns I could translate into knitting (much as a did with the Turkish Mafrash pattern). Ta-da!)

After a few hours of shopping, we were sorely in need of a break, partly because it was hot and humid and partly because TMK was starting to succumb to the Headcold That Ate New York. (See, TMK works at home alone. Which means she is rarely exposed to the various germs that the rest of us, who work in buildings with questionable ventilation and air-filtration systems, are bombarded with every day. So, take someone with a quasi-boy-in-the-bubble immune system, slap her on an airplane with 138 other people, make her breathe moist, germ-laden air for 2.5 hours, and you’ve got a recipe for respiratory disease. Happens. Every. Time. Although she gave as good as she got on the trip home. By now, the Headcold That Ate New York has probably traveled to all four corners of the earth. Yeah!)

So, what to do, what to do... I know! Let’s hunt up a coffee shop, have coffee (TMK) and a strawberry smoothie (moi), and then play King of the Mountain with Mongol LEE.

Okay, well that killed 11.5 minutes. Again, what to do, what to do...Oooo, I know; I know! How about an extreme Hummer ride? Which is how at 2:30 in the afternoon, you would have found TMK, me, and our tour guide Mr. Ed jouncing and bouncing our way up and over and through some of the rougher parts of the Sedona countryside. I do believe I even went “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!” a coupla of times as my tushie flew off the seat. It was a blast.

(And yes, we blurred out TMK’s face just to annoy, giggling all the while. The truth is, 2.5 years into the blog, she really doesn’t care if anyone sees her face, but it’s become A Thing and when something becomes A Thing, even the blogmistress has no control over it.)

We ended the day with Lunchable-equivalents, lots of resting and for TMK, liberal consumption of Airborne.

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Wednesday
A day or two before we left Seattle, I received an unexpected email from a very good friend of Cuzzin Tom’s who generously and hospitably invited us to spend Wednesday with her and the Cuzz in the small town of Jerome, where she and her husband live and which is about ½ an hour outside of Sedona. Since we already had plans to take the Verde Canyon train that afternoon, which leaves from another town very close to Jerome, we jigsaw-puzzled the day together, spending the morning and evening in Jerome, and the afternoon on the train.

Here, Mongol LEE learns something historical about Jerome:

Here, Mongol LEE proves that we did indeed visit at least one yarn store while in Arizona, Knit One Bead Two.

Here, a photo of the Jerome tourist office. No, it’s not your imagination, the sign is almost as large as the actual office.

At about 12:30, after a quick but fun tour of Jerome and a great lunch which, thank you, Jesus!, did not include Lunchables, TMK and I headed off for the train and 4-hour trip through red rock canyons.

Mongol LEE enjoying the train ride, even though some fresh strumpet is squeezing his felted butt.

Proof that the train comes vewy, vewy close to the canyon walls.

A picture of the open-air cars where you could stand to get a good view.

Sadly, at the end of the train trip, Mongol LEE was carried off by a giant bald eagle. But we didn’t care because we had an evening of homemade fajitas, watermelon, and camaraderie waiting for us in Jerome.

Sarah, if you’re out there, thank you for playing tour guide for us and the wonderful dinner!

Friday
Back to Phoenix, where we spent half an hour lost in a very scary part of town looking for the airport, and home to Seattle and Frankie, who was not very happy to see us, because she was perfectly happy right where she was, thank you very much.

(Side note: Cuzzin Tom has revved up his blog again. Hoo-ah!)

Posted by Ryan at October 3, 2005 11:25 AM