Apr 2009

I'm done with Sedona for now.

I changed campground two nights ago, to go a bit North of Sedona. First night, I was told it was 24 degree Fahrenheit (that is below freezing!) and 32 on last night. I had all my clothes on (that’d be 4 layers, plus scarf, warm hat and gloves), but it still was pretty unpleasant in my so-they-say 3 degree centigrade North Face sleeping bag!

On the first morning in the new camp, I was offered some tea by Daniel and Tamara. Daniel has been in Sedona quite a few times and advised me to hike on Wilson Mountain. It was a good advice as the overview on Sedona is great.

My camera could only capture a small part of it, sorry!

See, I was there! That view was the signal for me to move on. I felt like I could leave Sedona peacefully.

Saying goodbye to Sedona.

Yesterday night I was nicely invited to share a campfire with Jeff and Kelly, from Tucson. We chatted as the sun went down and then played guitar and sung around the fire. It was fantastic. I didn’t think of taking a picture, though!

Climbing up to Flagstaff.

In Flagstaff the first thing I did was buying a warmer sleeping bag. This one should take me up to -10 degrees centigrade (15 fahrenheit), which should be much better.

Then I found this great shop that sold plenty of CDs for one buck:

I bought 4, 2 of which (Billy Joel and Van Morrison) I recognised were on that "500 best albums of all time" Rolling Stone book that my brother Frederic gave me for Christmas 2007. I'll probably drive route 66 listening to them.

I think I’m getting used to being on holiday now. I’m very chilled out.

The Aussie burger. Cheese, Bacon and fried egg. The menu said "Don't be afraid, mate!" If there was some rattlesnake in it, I'd understand...

Sitting in the sun, listening to some good music, drinking some great local beer (10 oz were plenty enough to get in the mood) and eating my burger, I felt in paradise.

Next stop now is the Grand Canyon Village. I need to see if I can hike down there. I've heard people have to book permits for months in advance. But some people told me there are some other options. Daniel told me he hiked down and up the canyon in one very long day. It's 1500 meters of elevation difference: the headlamp is crucial to come back! I've done 1,200 meters elevation hikes in the French Alps, I'm reasonably fit and I've got used to the climate here (cold dry air, strong sun, big temperature changes), so I might just about be able to do it. But hopefully I'll be able to find a way to camp down there.

Food & religion.

:-(

Free, but I didn't try it. :-P

Great sky.

Marshmallow, friends and camp fire...! This was at the very nice Lolo Mai camp site. I met with these two dutch-speaking Belgians, on a trip similar to mine except they rented a camper van.

American Stitch (reference to a character featuring in my movie "Keekoo & the Marmot" on Youtube).

The Red Rocks of Sedona. I find them very hard to capture on such a tiny camera, so you really should come and see them for yourself!

It's difficult to get used to such a grandiose scenery.

Today is a bit miserable. The sun is gone behind grey skies and it gets really cold as a result. It's probably going to be 0 or 1 degree (centigrade) tonight. No sun and low temperature is not great when you're outdoors and far from home. It's supposed to get much better tomorrow.

While hiking yesterday, I met with some more nice people. Monica is from New York but has spent the last few years in Alaska. Amongst other things she told me a nice metaphor: Americans are like a peach and Europeans like a coconut. Americans are very open and easy-going to start with, but if you try to go deeper, you hit the pit. Europeans are much harder on the outside, like a coconut, but very sweet once you've got past the barrier.

That reminds me, I was talking with an Ukrainian the other day and he was saying that no one smiles in Russia. Like if you're in a shop and the shop-keeper smiles, people will think something is wrong with the goods or the prices. So I wonder what kind of fruit Russians would be... :-P (No offence, btw)

Also chatted with a young couple from New Jersey that just got married last week in Rhodes Island.

I also briefly chatted with a couple of retired people from Los Angeles. It was brief, but the stillness in their eyes made a strong impression on me. They seemed very much in the present moment, and very happy.

Today I have to admit I feel quite lonely. I'm thinking the next time I do a trip like that (and there will be a next time, for sure!), I'll definitely do it with someone else.

Vous aurez remarque que j'ai arrete de traduire mes articles en francais a chaque fois... Je vous recommande d'utiliser Google Translate:\

http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdocte-gaby.travellerspoint.com&sl=en&tl=fr

Le lien ci-dessus devrait fonctionner meme lorsque je poste de nouveaux articles.

Yesterday after posting, I looked for a campground to pitch the tent. The GPS found "Pinerock Camp" near Prescott. It's actually more a campground for "RV" (Recreational Vehicles) and it was actually closed and empty... Mike, who runs the place with his wife Cindy, was nice enough to offer me hospitality anyway and showed me where I could pitch the tent.

It was the first time I didn't pitch the tent on grass... a bit trickier but it worked -- thankfully it wasn't too windy or stormy during the night!

Hmm pasta... and as long as there is some beer, the moral is up!

The night was a bit chilly, though. I think it was something like 1,500 meters above sea level (to check), and Mike was telling me they had some snow just a couple of days ago!

This morning I had breakfast with Mike and we chatted a bit about his career changes and what brought him from NewYork and Chicago to Arizona.

After that I took the very winding road towards Jerome, where most turns are limited to 20 mph...!

Jerome used to be a real sin city during the gold rush. It then became the biggest ghost city of America. Now it's home to a lot of artists who expose their wares in posh galleries. It's actually a town I could visit by foot. The street were tiny and not organised in blocks for once, mostly because the town tries to hard to clutch onto the steep slope of the mountain.

That was much better than what I had in Phoenix. Bleu cheese & Bacon burger, at the Mile High Inn.

There was also an old "ghost" mine, but I saw one already and I didn't feel like camping in the area, so I just took a picture from a dirt road above and decided to hit the road to Sedona instead.

On the way, the gasoline light went on and I pulled over in a station. I had to figure out what fuel my car ran on...! There was little indication on the car itself. The people of the stations (including a customer) were very helpful (and amused by my not-knowing). It turns out no cars here use Diesel. Except the biggest cars that are in fact qualified of "trucks". The car didn't break down, so they must have been right!

It's funny how it works. You have either to pay by card, or to pay in advance. It's a bit difficult to know in advance how much you're going to need! The lady estimated $25 and she was spot on. Once you've paid, you have to lift the plastic bit in which the hose is stowed when unused, otherwise the damn thing wouldn't work at all. Then there's a system where you can block the handle so that the gas keeps coming out even if you don't press the handle anymore.

Now I'm in Sedona.

I long for a campground with a view. Somewhere I could settle for a few days, and just hike and generally take it easy. Watch the sun set. Watch the sun rise. Gaze at the stars. Relax. My life has been so hectic recently, what with deciding to move out of my place (which I did in 8 days, from the decision to the house being empty & clean) and then squat at a crazy saxophonist's place (no offense :-P).

I just long for some time off, with not much to worry about. No GPS. No "where am I going to sleep tonight?" Etc.

I'm hoping to find this in Sedona. I want to settle for a few days and there are a lot of scenic hiking trails here.

It's gonna do me a lot of good.

PS: many thanks to all of you who write comments (here or on FaceBook) or send me emails. I don't really take the time to answer them, but they're great!

I've been in the US only a few days and I've already dialled 911! Not for me, though.

It happened this morning, as I was driving from Wickenburg to Prescott. Since I left Phoenix yesterday, the desert has been pretty flat. On the road to Prescott, however, it starts to climb onto what I think is the colorado plateau.

The road starts to get really torteous. Half-way up the climb, I saw a motorbike laid down on the side of the road, and the biker standing near the railing. It looked like he had just fallen off his bike. The guy was a bit confused. Without hesitating long I pulled over and asked from a distance if he was alright. He still had his helmet and he was alone, which I found a bit odd. I was a bit scared to be honest. I couldn't help thinking that maybe it was some sort of scam to get the tourist to stop and then someone else would come out of nowhere and take my money. So my reflex was to call 911. When I know that someone is coming, then I can get close to the guy and see if I could help.

I'm not used to call for emergency, so I had to explain very vaguely the situation to 3 or 4 persons over the phone. By that time, another guy had pulled over with a truck, assessed the situation and very calmly started to get cones out of his truck to secure the roadside. He then checked the guy out with me and only then called 911, giving informations such as "He is coherent", etc. That made me think I need to get on a first-aid training!

Pretty soon an ambulance arrived. Then fire men. Then police men. All in all, there came something like 6 vehicles all with sirens and blinking lights! I thought it was a bit overkill.

The biker is safe. I think he might have a dismantled/broken shoulder. :-( But he's alive and well. It turned out he stopped to take pictures a bit further down, which is why his mates where not with him. But they soon came back. They all thanked me for stopping. I didn't feel very useful though, to be honest! I'll think about this first-aid training.

Yesterday, I left Phoenix and drove in the desert up to Wickenburg, a small gold mining town.

A few miles away, there's an old abandonned "ghost" gold mine called the Vulture Mine. There I met with Gayle and Gordon, a couple of friends that kind of guided me around.

Gordon used to be a pilot in the military and I believe he is now retired. Arizona´s weather is great for pilots as it allows them to fly so many days a year. He loves old places like for example the Vulture Mine and the city of Jerome which I´ll see tomorrow. It was very interested listening to his slow American voice as he explained things about the mine, cactus, rattlesnakes, etc...

Gayle is a very enthusiastic person. She used to play piano and sing blues in clubs, before selling credit cards to movie stars (including Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie´s dad, which reminded me of an episode of Jerry Seinfeld...!), and then taking an early retirement. It was a lot of fun to hang out with both of them.

After the mine, we went back to Wickenburg to have a drink in one of the ¨Salloon¨. We talked a bit about the US. Cars, cities, religion and guns, amongst other things.

Then I found a campground to pitch the tent before dark. It was very near a very busy road. I have no idea why, but big huge trucks have this habit of honking for like a second or two several times in a row. I´ll have to find out what for, because it sure was annoying.

Then as you know I headed to Prescott. There, I visited the Sharlot Hall Museum. It's a bit funny how proud they are to still have the original Governor's "Mansion" (a big log cabin, in fact), something like 130 years after it's been built. A 130-years-old building doesn't really qualify as very old in Europe, but here in the West, that's the oldest thing they've got! It's starting to change, but until recently, they mostly had the same attitude I read the Chinese have about old things: "we don't need that, it's old, take it down and build new things instead".

PS: I've just understood why I was having difficulties with the quotes and apostrophe in this post: my keyboard was set to Spanish!