Skiergirl: Boulder City to Sedona

It was very lovely to sleep in a bed in an air conditioned room last night. Although it spoiled me a little... I contemplated doing it again tonight! But my money won't last long that way, it's bad enough that I've been eating out most of the time rather than cooking.

I left Boulder City this morning and drove the 10 miles to the Hoover Dam. I got there just as the parking garage was opening so I got a Costanza parking spot. The first tour didn't star for another hour though, so I sat in Rolly, ate my continental breakfast from the motel (a hard-boiled egg and a packaged apple danish) and listened to NPR. It was already stinking hot at 8:00 am so I occasionally turned Rolly on to AC up a bit.

After going through security (laid out exactly the same as at an airport) I paid the big bucks and went on the tour of the dam. In my experience, tours are good. You learn a lot about the sights rather than just snapping a few pictures and moving on.

There was a brief movie about the making of the dam, followed by a tour of one of the power generating stations and one of the pin stocks. From there you were on your own to go up on the observation deck, to observe the dam from above. There was also a bit of an exhibit/museum to explore. The tour was fairly informative, but a little disappointing. Since 9/11 they cut big sections out of the tour for security reasons so I didn't actually get to go inside the dam and the tour seemed like it was lacking some major stuff. But, still well worth it.

The Arizona/Nevada border is halfway across the dam, so I said goodbye to Nevada after the tour. I was quite pleased to be doing so actually, I wasn't a big fan of the state. To be fair, I must qualify that statement with the fact that I was only there for a day and didn't really see a lot of it. But what I did see was sparse, desolate, cruddy and very impoverished looking. It seemed that all the prosperous people lived in Vegas, everyone else was poor and lived in trailers in the desert. Perhaps I'm wrong, I only saw what was visible from the highways.

I was expecting Arizona to be much the same as Nevada, but it's not. What I've seen of it anyway. As I got closer to Flagstaff there were actually quite a lot of trees. Also, I didn't see very much in the way of run-down trailers or people living in squalor. Perhaps they're just along a different highway. I don't know enough about these states to know if there is much of a cultural or economic difference, but it appeared to be so.

I had heard from people-in-the-know (Cory and Mark) that Sedona was a nice place. It was a bit out of my way, but I also didn't want to go right to the Grand Canyon today, so I thought I'd give it a try. I also made the decision to take the alternate route rather than the main interstate running from Flagstaff to Sedona. These turned out to be a very good choices. The road wound down into the Verde Canyon, through layers of red, orange, yellow and buff sedimentary rocks. The canyon follows Oak Creek and eventually opens up into a wide valley at Sedona. Sedona is surrounded by spectacular red to yellow buttes. I had no idea what to expect of this place, so the scenery was a fantastic surprise. I believe I said "wow!" a few times.

I stopped at a state park just before Sedona to see if they had any campsites available. The nice woman working there informed me that they were full, but she runs another state campground closer to the city. It is a group campground which only takes reservations, but they didn't have anyone coming for the next few days so she told me to head there and set up. It's a pretty nice place, right beside the creek and really close to town. Her and her husband live in their RV right beside my site, and I'm currently listening to their old-school country music, which is setting quite a nice atmosphere... a little Johnny Cash and Elvis never hurt anyone.

I plan on staying here for at least two nights. There is a ton of stuff to do in the area, and it'll be nice to leave my tent in the same spot for more than one day. Tomorrow I'm going to go to a bike shop and see if they have any group rides going out any time soon or, if not, to see which trails they recommend. Then I'm going to go on a Jeep tour of the valley. They take you off-road into some of the more remote places and give you some background info. I'm really looking forward to it.