Roads Less Traveled

Sedona is a pleasant town.  The streets are clean and the water right out of the tap is good.  There are excellent restaurants, chic shopping venues, and a host of outdoor activities to enjoy…and you can enjoy all of it throughout the year.  

I grew up around cacti.  Once, while riding my bike, I fell into a barrel cactus that adorned a corner of our house in Tempe, AZ.  This resulted in my Dad setting me down at the kitchen table and pulling dozens of the hooked barbs out of my thigh with some needle-nosed Vise-Grips.  Years later, I found a small piece of one of those needles still stuck under my skin.  By then, it was too deep to pull out with pliers, so off to the doctor we went.  You might think, given that story, that I’d have a certain amount of fear and loathing for the spiny succulents, but no: in reality, I admire them.  They’re survivors, living in crappy soil, no water, and 120+ degree days.  Anything that can survive those conditions deserves my respect.  

Antelope Canyon surprised me.  I lived in Arizona for a good part of my youth, and I’d never heard of it, even though I camped out quite a bit as a Boy Scout all over the state.  Later, I’d come back to raft the Grand Canyon, which is an easy drive away from Antelope.  I only included it in my March 2019 Western parks itinerary because I just happened to read about it on the Internet.  

So imagine how I felt when I entered this amazing slot canyon for the first time.