So we took a different route leaving Sedona at the end of a super fun afternoon to get us back to our house near Prescott, and that would be State Route 89A. It’s known, as we found out later, as one of Arizona’s most scenic drives, if not the most. We only travelled that Sedona-on south portion of it, but I’d say none of us will ever forget that drive. I looked back at Caroline and this is what she looked like.
Two scarves covering her eyes and hugging herself and crying her eyes out and not even letting her head turn toward the view out the window. I was freaking myself, but had to remain composed for the kids’ sake so I distracted myself by alternating taking pictures between my pink camera and my phone camera.
Once we started the curvy mountainous climb, I had to put aside my hot fudge sundae we had just bought at a DQ. I had never disrespected proper ice cream consumption ever before in my life, so this tells you something. I started feeling sick the minute we were into the first of the hairpin curves.
As a flat Midwest girl all her life who can count the times she’s seen mountains, it was unnerving to look ahead and see a caution sign for a 25 mile an hour curve. On a highway! Highways are where I usually prefer speeds like 80 mph, you know, safe speeds. We could see over the sides and out ahead of us, and it was just open air drops to view, except for the mountain side we were hugging and the road surface itself. We met a few other pick-up trucks. I had to ask Gary if these were nut-bat people doing what we were doing or would they be people really driving this road to get to their job or something. It baffled my mind why anyone ever thought there should be a road here. Why go over this mountain? Why not just not go there?
What really bugged me was looking ahead and seeing there was more.
When we stopped in Jerome, which seemed really cool but crazy, this was the view of the valley below.
You can see some buildings of Jerome in the background here, built vertically into this mountain, unreal. The buildings were right on the road; I mean someone’s porch chair would literally be five feet from us on the road.
We still had 2000+ feet to climb.
Oh yeah, and views of sheer rock slides that were not comforting to me at all. And the sun was going down and I did not want to be on this mountain road after dark.
Gary says if we had known about the “scenic” nature of the drive and how slow it would go, we probably wouldn’t have taken it, so true!, but instead it really gave us a day to remember of our vacation and we would have missed seeing some incredible views.
We did get off the mountain by sundown and cruised on in to Prescott.
Double WOW!!We made that drive years ago and I remember how high Jerome was and how close the buildings were to the road.
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