Ron in Manhattan Beach mailed Greenwood a letter and photos of their trip to Sedona Arizona.
Quote: We thoroughly enjoyed our trip. Sedona is a very upscale tourist trap. Its full of art shops and very high quality handcraft shops and restaurants. The population has doubled to about 17,000 in the last 5 -10 years and there is beginning to be a bit of sprawling to the west
side of town. (When Frank Lloyd Wright first saw Sedona he said "Nothing should ever be built here". He was quite right, but completely ignored.) Seven Mile Beach and Manhattan Beach are not the only places with developer problems. Unquote.
route 66 in Arizona
parallel interstate of route66, approaching Flagstaff at sunset
He had met many bikers in Sodena. Vulcan bike's license plate is "COW".
two riders on "Vulcan" s. It's not a Hog.
Riders in Sedona airport parking lot
Here are additional 6 pictures of the Sedona area sent by Ron later. All those pictures were taken in the second week of March 2000. He tells as follows.
Most of these pictures were taken with a wide angle, 28mm lens on a 35mm camera. The mesas are so close to town that longer lenses could not accommodate the whole thing.
Sedona's airport is on a large mesa, south of town. It gives great views of the town and valley. The first two pictures are from there.
As you can see they can sprawl without restriction in that direction. The town is at about 1500m elevation, where the pine forest is just giving up to the desert. The airport is, perhaps at 1700m. There are quite a few pine trees there.
looking down the valley, across the western part of town
Some of the building is also spreading up the airport road. These are very high priced developments. Some of these go for more than $1M. Of course the views are astounding.
some large houses
There was a moderate difficulty hiking trail up the Doe mountain to an elevation of almost 2000m. The view is of another valley, north of Sedona. As you can see, the desert soon takes over as the elevation declines.
from Doe mountain, outside town
One of the best views was from Rachel's Knoll, also north of Sedona. This is the sort of setting that Hollywood used for many of the old western movies.
views from Rachel's Knoll shows several fine mesas with shower clouds breaking up around them
You can get some idea of the way the mountains surround the town from the picture taken in our motel, across the swimming pool. Just about every place in the town has this sort of view.
view from the swimming pool of the motel
Oak Creek Canyon is about 30 km north of Sedona, which is beyond the end of the canyon, just over the horizon. The creek flowed down a crack in the edge of the plateau and gradually widened its valley into the mini-grand canyon you see in the picture. Sedona's site is where the river got down to the desert base elevation and started to widen out. Its beauty is a direct consequence of the Oak Creek erosion. Elevation here at the top of the canyon is about 2100m. Note, there are no leaves on the trees here as there were in Sedona 600m lower down.
Oak Creek Canyon
Many appreciation to Ron for providing information about this area. Probably Ishihara riders group may visit this area in the autumn of 2000.