Williams and Sedona

We had a long drive from Benzon, AZ up to Williams, AZ on Monday and picked the Grand Canyon Railroad and Hotel RV park. We got a good rate for 7 days so we are using it as a base camp. I'm surprised how busy they are.  Can't imagine what the summer looks like.

Since we bypassed Sedona on the way up, we decided to go back down there in just the truck on Tuesday to see what all the fuss was about.  We'd heard it was a must see.  Well, not so much in my mind.  Our first mistake was to take the scenic route 89A down from Flagstaff, thinking it was, well scenic. 

The road was very curvy with very few pull off for taking pictures.  If you found a wide spot in the road it was already taken.  Keep in mind this is Tuesday in early May, not July 4th weekend.  We found a few pull-offs, that charged to park and take pictures and they were full.

So I was not in a great frame of mind when we came into the "city".  Finally found a public parking lot, but not designed for trucks, so we sort of cheated and used Martha's still valid handicap parking sticker since there were lots of those in the lot.

Next we hiked to the main drag for some lunch and found a nice place.  Our goal was a place with a view.  Found one, took some photos while we enjoyed the most expensive hamburger and grilled cheese & mushroom sandwich I've every seen. 

After lunch we looked into taking a jeep tour off road in hopes to get a better view of the red mountains.  $90 per person!!  You can get a special deal on Southwest Airlines cheaper than that.  So we passed on that.  Maybe I can find a video of the trip on Youtube.

So we headed back up to Williams and stopped to take some pictures and got a good one of the high peak you see out of Flagstaff.  It was still snow covered. (Link to Flickr photos)

After a stop for groceries, we went bar hopping.  The first one was clearly a tourist place.  $7 for a craft beer that made me miss the pubs back home with their $4 beers that are clearly better.

On to a local bar next.  It's famous we are told, mainly because it's the oldest bar in Williams, first to reopen after Prohibition, and has a theater as part of the bar that was the first one in Arizona.  It's 110 years old, if I remember right.  It's called Sultana.  Met a retired local couple who moved here 5 years ago after retiring and RVing around the USA for 6 years.  Picked Williams because it was a small interesting town.  They still ride their Harley's up to Sturgis, SD when the need arises. 

So the day ended on a positive note aided by mass quantities of alcohol.