Day 4 - Phoenix, ARIZONA to Sedona, ARIZONA

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Breakfast included another omelette freshly cooked with potatoes on the side this time. Yummy and thought I’d load up as we have a drive today and going to do a bit of walking too. Not sure when we’ll have someone cooking fresh for us so took advantage of the opportunity presented by Embassy Suites. Also had the orange and passionfruit juice which was so refreshing.



We hit the road right on 8.00am as planned heading to North Arizona. Weather is sunny and a bit cooler when we left but was still forecast to reach 40 degrees in Phoenix but as we are heading for the mountains it will hopefully not be much hotter than 30 today.



It was amazing to see so many cactus plants along the drive and suddenly when we reached a certain altitude they disappeared in a sudden.



When we did our research we realised that on our way to Sedona we went straight past the Out Of Africa Zoo so we decided to book the Mogo Tour for 11.00am, and arrived right on opening time @ 9.30am. When we checked in there was only a handful of people there and the lady said “oh you must be the Australians that we are expecting ?”. How nice to be noticed. Most of the animals were in large fenced off areas but they were kind of designed to look like they were in their natural habitats and able to roam around a decent area but a lot were sleeping.



When we started our tour we had a zookeeper drive us around the park and she explained a lot about the animals and fed them so as to wake them up. There was quite a lot of African animals and we saw lions, rhino, wolves, coyotes, bears, tigers, cougars, black panther (the coolest of cats !), porcupine and some native animals to Arizona. Later on the tour they took the bus into the open range area where we saw zebras, longhorn cattle, ostriches, mountain goats, various forms of antelopes, giraffes (Kerry got to feed one by hand from the bus) and a very rare species called a white addax. The zookeeper said there were only 3 left in the wild in the Sahara Desert and what makes them special is they can live extraordinary amounts of time without needing water (in fact they can live their whole life without water which is amazing). One animal we saw looked familiar being the Emu but the Arizona pronunciation was more like Emoo.



The park had what looked like an amazing zipline course as well and some afternoon shows which we did not see. We left the park around 1.00pm as it was really hot (mid 30’s) and went to nearby Cottonwood to go to Randall’s Diner but it was 1.30pm and they were full and had people waiting so we decided to head on up the road to Sedona on Highway 89a and wow what a scenic drive.



Possibly the most impressive scenic drive I have ever seen as you see the famous Red Rocks. We arrived shortly after in West Sedona where we originally booked to stay on the 2020 version of this holiday and found a nice looking diner but alas they were closing at 2pm. Soon found another place called Stagecoach Country Roadhouse. We had a soup called Arizona Corn Chowder. It was delicious. It had Pepper Cheddar Cheese, Cascabel Oil, Bacon and Scallions. And we were joined by a random fly as listened to Dolly Parton music in the saloon.



Then off to our stay at the Matterhorn Hotel. Kerry had her eyes on this place from the start due it’s prime location in Upper Sedona but it was closed for renovations for a long time but had reopened earlier this year and when we checked and opened the curtains to see the view from our balcony it was an OMG moment.



We had time to go fora walk down Main Street looking at the souvenir shops down to the the pick up point for the Sedona Trolley Tour leaving at 5.00pm for an hour. This was meant to be an orientation tour around Sedona but we both felt it was underwhelming and the driver did not communicate very well (monotone). He did explain about the vortex theories of Sedona and shared some history dating back to the days of John Wayne western movies that were filmed here which would later bring tourists here in their droves.



Once back in Upper Sedona we had dinner on the balcony patio area of Canyon Breeze where Kerry had a BBQ Pork Sandwich and I had the Uptown Burger and both had coleslaw sides. A couple of Angry Orchard Ciders and Oak Creek Ambers and we got to the sun go down on the red rocks of Sedona. Amazing !



Back to our room and realised we should have stopped somewhere to grab something to relax on the balcony as the town closes early at night and no bottle shops anywhere !



Tomorrow we spend the whole day here to explore the beauty of this region.

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