The campsite we are on is totally wonderful. It was dark the night we arrived so we had not seen the backdrop to our new temporary residence. As we look out we see the high red rock cliffs that Sedona is famed for, which are particularly spectacular in the early morning and late afternoon sun. We are down in a valley right next to the fast flowing Oak Creek, which is being swelled with melt water, and provides us with a wonderful bubbling background sound. A number of the rocks are much photographed and have grandiose names like Cathedral Rock – but our favourite is Snoopy Rock which amazingly does look like Snoopy lying on his back.
Our first day task is to explore the town of Sedona, which is stunningly set in amongst red sandstone cliffs hundreds of feet high and many thousands of acres of preserved wilderness. The main street is highly oriented around the tourist industry and of course we are drawn to these shops because after all you cannot have too many souvenirs which is paradoxical to our current mode of existence where space is a premium. At some stage something will have to give – perhaps we’ll just leave one of the children somewhere to make more room!!! Anyway as we happily flit from one store to another we are drawn into the lair of a lady who uses some discount tickets for one of the Jeep tours to entice us in. To get these we have to agree to sit through a 90 minute presentation selling us a timeshare in the Hyatt Resort across the road. Seemed a good offer to us so we signed up for the following morning! One of the noticeable things about Sedona is the huge number of mystic and new age shops – a very spiritual place. There are apparently several local “vortexes”, places where high levels of spiritual energy are emitted and visiting these vortexes apparently transfers some of this energy to you and makes you feel a whole lot better. We didn’t have any time to experience these but we did the next best thing and visited a mystic in her shop – she was kind but rather scary in a strange short of way. The scariest thing was her hair which did not seem of this world, but talking to her it was apparent she was no spring chicken but looked well so the vortex energy must do something for you. We found some inexpensive fossils in the bargain basket, paid and left.
The next day we dutifully turned up for the presentation. They had kindly offered the services of their onsite child care staff to entertain Jack and Emily so only the adults had to suffer. Fortunately we had been through this process several times so we listened politely and then said no thank you and walked away with our discount tickets. The children had had a wonderful time with Patricia who is in charge of the health and fitness club and also runs the childcare activities. They were the only children there so they had her full attention; they did crafts, making a rain maker stick, played pool and had some time on the computer. When we had agreed to come to the presentation we also asked if we could use the pool which they said was fine, so we spent what was left of the morning playing around by the poolTonight we travelled back up to Flagstaff – up the wiggly 89A route through Oak Creek Canyon. It did not seem half so scary in the Jeep. The reason for our trip back was to visit the Lowell Observatory which offers evening tours which include the chance to observe the stars and planets through the 24 inch refracting telescope. This is a privately funded observatory (so welcomes visitors), sitting at 7250 feet above sea level on Mars Hill overlooking Flagstaff. It was established in 1894 by the astronomer Percival Lowell. He studied Mars extensively and speculated that the canals observed on the planet were the creation of Martians to control the distribution of water. It was also his research that led to the discovery of the planet Pluto 14 years after his death.
When we arrive it is just starting to get dark so we decided to spend a while looking around the museum exhibits which are very interesting, and cover such diverse subjects at the formation of stars, planets of the solar system, the effects of light pollution on night sky observation and the history of astronomical telescopes. All of these exhibits are interactive and many have multimedia support. For us the real reason for being here was to observe the stars so we could not hold ourselves back for long from going out to the observatory. Fortunately it is a very clear night with almost no cloud cover, which more unfortunately means it is cold up here at 7250 feet above sea level in February. In the main observatory, with the 24 inch refracting telescope, they have set-up to view Mars which is extremely clear on this night. We have never actually had a chance to use such a powerful telescope before so it is so exciting to get a clear view of the red planet. Outside of the main observatory they have set up a smaller telescope – by now it is freezing cold out here but we patiently wait our turn and try to take our mind off the cold by chatting to those around us. The wait is worthwhile as we get to see Saturn and its rings clearly visible, and as a bonus we can see two of its nine moons. As we were at the end of the queue they change to position of the telescope to allow us to see one of the nebulas, an active area of cosmic dust and gas clouds where planets and stars are being born. Wonderful! To end our visit we decided to visit the main telescope again, and to our great delight they had moved it around to observe Saturn. So again we got to see this giant gas planet, but all the more clearer than with the smaller telescope. What a wonderful experience.
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